March 2011 Archives

I recently coached two friends, both of whom are thinking about moving to different organizations. I'd like to repeat part of that conversation here, for anyone who faces a similar transition.

When you move from one organization to the next, you have a rare opportunity to completely relax. This separation will help you as you transition into your new role, helping provide a clarity that only comes with "time out." That time is precious - don't "waste" it by skipping immediately to the next job. If you can take some time out, I recommend you take it. Even if it's only a week.

Let me use myself as an example. In early June, I announced that I was leaving OIT, to become the Campus IT Director for the University of Minnesota, Morris. I said: "My last day with OIT will be Friday June 18. I'll have a few weeks for relocation, then I'll start at Morris on Monday July 12."

I had an entire month to myself! Sure, the first few days were spent how I usually start a vacation: I stayed up late, and I slept in. But then I came to an amazing realization: I didn't have any responsibilities.

• My access in OIT had been revoked. I'd already transitioned all my duties to the next manager. No matter what emergency happened at my old office, there was nothing I could do.
• I hadn't yet been granted any access at Morris. I had been named the new IT Director, and a few people knew me. I'd met the Computing Services staff during my interview. But if something major happened, there was virtually nothing for me to do.

Without any responsibilities, I truly began to relax. And even though my wife and I spent part of that "month off" buying a house and moving, I didn't care.

When that month ended, and it was time to get back into gear, I found I could think more clearly. I could focus more easily. I could prioritize more efficiently, because that clarity brought perspective.

The IT manager in 2011 plays a much different role than the IT manager of several years ago. There used to be a time when all Information Technology was centralized - think mainframes, time-share systems, supercomputers. If you needed technology to get the job done, you went through the IT manager.

Today, the IT manager's job has changed. Technology has become a commodity, ubiquitous. IT no longer can survive in an "ivory tower".

A great example is as follows: A faculty member accessing Gmail on a laptop using Thunderbird via a USB attached cellular network device. What part of that configuration would an IT manager be successful at assisting a remote user with? And would they even try?

This trend is only going to grow as consumer-oriented devices meshing with cloud-based services become the norm. Already only 25% of the devices that our local IT staff support are owned by the University; most of the computing devices are in the hands of the users.

The role of local IT managers is rapidly changing from implementing stuff - to negotiating and brokering stuff.

In this environment, IT managers need to evaluate if centrally hosted services should become a shrinking portion of those they select to deploy. If you were to look at providing a new service for your college, say process management, would you go with a centrally-managed application, or load up an open source application on a hosted virtual machine, or share an application with another college, or use one of the many cloud-based process management solutions available today? Which is the most cost effective?

We've known for a while that the Cloud offers economy of scale that significantly reduce the operational expenses of providing a service. Similarly, it's become clear that IT shops can provide the most benefit to their users by assisting with the top-10 emerging technologies.

New options are appearing constantly and we need to not only assist our individual colleges in selecting these solutions but communicate among the colleges what solutions we're finding that work.

We're always in search of how to improve management and leadership. What makes a good manager? How do you turn a good manager into a great one?

You can read and endless list of articles about the topic of improvement management style. I've linked to many of them.

Google had the same question, and launched "Project Oxygen" to figure it out within their organization. The initial results were not surprising. But Oxygen then ranked the factors by importance, and came to a startling (for Google) discovery - technology skills became less important as you moved into management. Here is Google's list:

1. Be a good coach.
2. Empower your team and don't micromanage.
3. Express interest in team members' success and personal well-being.
4. Don't be a sissy; be productive and results-oriented.
5. Be a good communicator and listen to your team.
6. Help your employees with career development.
7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team.
8. Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team.

As described by the New York Times in Google's 8-point plan to help managers improve, this was a wake-up call for Google to change its attitude toward technical managers:

For much of its 13-year history, particularly the early years, Google has taken a pretty simple approach to management: Leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they'll ask their bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them into management in the first place.

But Mr. Bock's group found that technical expertise -- the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep -- ranked dead last among Google's big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees' lives and careers.

I've talked about this before. I even gave a guest presentation at Penguicon 2009 [PPT] that discussed, among other things, what motivates leaders in technology: As IT managers move up the ladder, the relative importance of technology skills becomes much less important, replaced by strategic thinking and interpersonal skills. An important part of that is delegation.

How does this match up to your IT management style? Do you put more effort in coaching your staff, in developing them professionally? Or do you focus on keeping your technology skills up to date?

Most IT managers already know that the Cloud provides advantages that, leveraged appropriately, can reduce the total costs of an IT service. IT organizations typically see a reduction in operational expenses associated with using a Cloud service. Because the Cloud host provides the same service to multiple "tenant" users, they can realize "economies of scale" to support many more users, at a much lower per-user cost.

At the same time, the IT organization avoid purchasing new IT infrastructure - which they would need to support the service on their own. And that means no server administration, no operating system, no patching, no software upgrades. That's all managed by the Cloud. Sure, local IT still provides user management, but that tends to be a very small part of the total effort.

'Twin Cities Business' discusses Cloud in their article, Cloud Confidence. The article starts with 2nd Wind Exercise Equipment needing to upgrade its mail server, and choosing Cloud: "Why buy new when Cloud computing will do?"

It's a good read.