• Reduce your ability to network professional
• Minimize the chance of finding new potential opportunities
• Lessen your chances of expanding your professional contacts
• Decrease the likelihood of widening your professional horizons though chance discussions with interesting people

Before I continue, I would like to clarify what I mean by talking to strangers and say, that even as adults, we have to be somewhat on guard and cognizant of our environment.  By talking to strangers, I mean

• Meeting new fellow employees in your company’s cafeteria
• Discussing general business topics with the person sitting next to you on a airplane
• Striking up conversations with people at professional association meetings
• Getting to know the fellow participants at a professional seminar or class

In addition to face-to-face interactions with other like-minded professionals, you can also asynchronously have conversations with new people via professional discussion boards and blog posts.

All of the above activities can help you grow as a professional, grow as a person, and related to this column, grow as a manager. Having discussions with people working outside of your professional area, company, industry, and/or country can help broaden your thinking by helping you understand the priorities, needs, and concerns of

• People of different ages (baby boomers, Gen Xers, Gen Yers, etc.)
• People from different ethnic cultures
• People from different religions
• People from different countries
• People with other general outlooks on life
• . . . and people of all other types that are different from you

Having a greater understanding of people who think differently from you helps you be a better manager because it will allow you to better understand the people working under your direction.

Having a good understanding of the people you are supervising makes it easier for you to motivate them, help them grow professionally, enhance your group’s teamwork, and as a result, increase their productivity, morale, and work satisfaction.

As a young manager, I incorrectly thought that everyone thought like I did. As a result, I tried to motivate my team using the same exact types of techniques and opportunities that motivated me.  Truth be told, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t work.  The reason it sometimes worked is because many people are motivated by the same things I am.  The problem, however, was there were also many people who thought differently than I and, as their manager, I didn’t always recognize the difference.  This was my mistake, not theirs.  I always tried to do my best for those who worked for me, but my lack of management experience and understanding of people’s diverse needs, motivations, and outlooks, occasionally caused me to fall short when managing certain individuals.  Over the years, as I grew as a person and a professional manager, I became better able to understand the motivations of those on my team, which allowed me to better manage the groups within my responsibility.  Did I always do the right thing? No, but my batting average was much, much higher. After all, none of us are perfect and personal and professional growth is a lifelong journey, not a final destination.

The reason that I told you this story is to try to illustrate to you the effect of how being more worldly and having a deeper understanding of others can affect your performance as a manager. That said, one of the things that greatly facilitated my ability to understand others, was my continual want to speak and learn from others.  I talk to people in airplanes, elevators, and every other business setting imaginable. In these discussions I have spoken to college professors, very senior executives, politicians, and people in virtually all other walks of life.  These discussions ranged from fascinating to  unmemorable, but in their aggregate, helped me grow, helped me learn, and as a result, I believe helped me become a better manager and, I hope, a better and well rounded person.   My goal is that this story, my story, helps you do the same.

This blog is an excerpt from my weekly nationally syndicated column with GateHouse News Service. My new columns can be found in GateHouse Media publications throughout the United States.

Until next time, manage well, manage smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter at @EricPBloom

Giving credit where it’s due, the expression “A fish rots from the head down” is an old proverb of unknown origin, but claimed by various countries and cultures.  Also, my limited research into the biological accuracy of the expression leads me to believe that it’s the fish’s inner organs, rather than its head, that actually rot first.  All that said, this is neither a history lesson nor a biology class so let’s get to the management implications of this great proverb.

If your department is having issues related to poor morale, low productivity, low quality, high attrition, or other similar and undesirable predicaments, a good place to begin your analysis is with some personal soul searching.  Note that, by this statement, I am by no means saying you are the problem, I’m just saying that you may be the problem or you are potentially contributing to the problem.

The reason I’m asking you to consider the possibility that you may be the cause or a contributing factor to your team’s difficulty is for the following reasons:

• As a manager, or just as a human being, self circumspection can help you learn more about yourself, which can help you grow as a person and as a professional.
• Knowing is the first step toward correcting. That is to say, that if after personal analysis you conclude that you are the cause of your team’s distress, you can begin making the needed changes.
• If you are the problem and everyone knows it but you, it puts you in a position to unilaterally correct your shortcomings without additional damage to your professional reputation and career potential at the company.
• If the problems within your department are in fact caused by external forces or circumstances, you can move forward trying to correct the problems with the confidence that you are not the root cause of the issue.

This expression also has a potentially more troublesome implication for you as a manager. That said, you are in good company.  This expression has also been used as a way to express concern and dissatisfaction with CEOs of large corporations, leaders of well known religious and civic organizations, and even toward various presidents of our country.  When used in this fashion, this single expression says two things at once; first, that there are significant problems within the organization and second, the leader (or in your case as manager) is specifically the cause.  In short, if you hear people speaking this way about you and your department, know that the wolves are at the door and your job may be in jeopardy.

The upside of being personally connected with your team’s performance and well-being is that the pendulum swings in both directions. That is to say, yes, you will be looked at poorly if your department is having significant issues, but you most likely will also be looked at with praise if your department is doing well.

Take note, however, that while this upside is true, it is not guaranteed.  Remember, as a manager, you are the member of two teams, namely, of the department you manage, and also a member of your manager’s team.  To truly have this pendulum fully swing in the positive direction also requires being positively viewed by your manager and peers.

This blog is an excerpt from my weekly nationally syndicated column with GateHouse News Service. My new columns can be found in GateHouse Media publications throughout the United States.

Until next time, manage well, manage smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter at @EricPBloom

Over the past few months I have been asked this question a number of times and relating to virtually all areas of IT, including programming, testing, data center operations, project management, business analysis, website design and, as illustrated in the question above, help desk support. I’ll be answering this/these questions here using the above help desk example, but I’ll be answering the question in a way that will be relevant to virtually all professionals within IT.

As you may expect, three years out of the IT industry is a professional lifetime. The job market changes, industry trends emerge and change direction. Vendors phase out products, upgrade current products and introduce new products. Lastly, as the general economy and specific industry change direction so do company goals. As a result of these and other factors, the IT world you left may be very different than the IT world you are trying to reenter. As a result, consider doing the following steps:

Step 1: Research
Do your research by considering the following questions:

• What specific job do you want to find?
• What are the current technologies used by that job?
• What are the current trends and challenges in your technical area?
• What skills related to the job you would like are in demand?
• What industries/companies are hiring in your area?

Step 2: Personal Skills Assessment
Compare your current skills and technical knowledge to the required skills and technologies defined in step 1. In essence, you are doing a gap analysis of the skills you have versus the skills you need.

Step 3: Skill Enhancement
Develop and execute a plan to enhance your skill set as needed. I realize this is much easier said than done. Below are some very low cost or free ways you can gain the skills, knowledge and experience to help you move forward.

• Download free evaluation copies of the software you want to learn. The evaluation copies are generally limited in some way such as automatically turning off after thirty days, not allowing you to save key types of data, limited stored data size, watermarks placed on graphics, and/or other limitations. From your perspective, however, who cares, you have full access to the application’s functionality for your educational purposes.
• You can find instructional YouTube videos for almost every topic. They are free and many of them are quite good.
• Volunteer at a local charity (or company) that uses the technology you want to learn. The deal is that you will work for free (part or full time as your schedule allows) and they will help you learn the product/technology and give you a professional reference if you do a good job.
• Your local government may have job retraining funds you can use and/or free training classes that you can take.

The trick for you here is to think outside-the-box of ways to have the skills you need and ideally a current job reference that you can use as part of your job search.

Step 4: Update your resume
This may sound like an obvious step, but don’t overlook the power of a well written resume and the roadblocks caused by a poor one. Seek the help of a professional resume writer and/or help from a friend in a management role who could give you suggestions based on the resumes he/she sees as part of his/her daily work.

Step 5: Build your professional brand and brand awareness
The bottom line here is to make sure the world knows that your skills are up to date and ready to get back into IT. The following activities can help you move this process along:

• Attend local (and often free) technology meetings. This activity alone has three advantages. They are making new contacts, gaining new knowledge, giving you something to talk about in interviews, and picking up tips on potential job opportunities.
• Become active in LinkedIn groups specifically related to the latest technologies in your area of newfound expertise. This may help people find you and your participation will continue to increase your technical knowledge in the area.

Step 6: Do information interviews
Find people in your field at companies where you would like to work and ask to meet them over coffee or in their office to

• Gain knowledge related to the technologies you are learning
• People they can connect you to
• Companies that they think may be hiring.

You don’t (and shouldn’t) them to hire you during an information interview, it will hurt your credibility with the person you are speaking with. Don’t worry about losing an opportunity if there is one at their firm. They know you are looking for a job and they will simply tell you about it if they are interested in you.

Step 7: Be relentless
Getting back into IT, particularly in this economic environment is not easy. Look hard and trust in your ability to find a job and do it well.

In closing, please note that many of the steps can actually be done simultaneously, rather than sequentially. I have presented then in a sequential manner to help provide structure to the overall process.

Lastly, to those who emailed me on this topic, good luck and best wishes on your job search.

This blog is based on a column I wrote last year, as part of my weekly blog in ITworld.com. For my most recent IT World blogs, go to http://www.itworld.com/blogs/eric-bloom

Until next time, work hard, work smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter @EricPBloom

• Getting Permission to hire
• Reviewing Resumes
• Deciding which person to hire
• Interviewing Job Candidates
• Hire people that love their work

In this week’s column, I would like to discuss hiring from a different perspective, namely, the importance of hiring the right people. By the right people, I don’t necessarily mean hiring the person who is the smartest, the most experienced, the most educated, etc.  I mean hiring the person who:

• Will, in the long run, perform the job best
• Will continue working for you for an extended length of time
• Fits in well from a personality perspective with others in your group
• Helps bring your group up, rather than bring them down
• Enhances your group’s productivity
• Is a no-problem employee, that is to say, doesn’t cause you problems
• Has all the other related traits that makes a great employee

As a manager, one of the most important things you can do is hire good people. It’s important to the company, your manager, your department, and you personally.

Good hires are important to your company for three primary reasons.  First everyone, employed by the company, including you, is an expense to the company based on salary, benefits, occupancy (office space, phone, etc.) and, like all companies and investments; a specific Return On Investment (ROI) is expected.  The ROI on an employee is based on the value of the work done by the employee. Second, all companies have a limited supply of salary dollars.  Therefore, if the company hires a low performing employee, there is an opportunity cost related to the work that could have been done by a hire producing employee.  Lastly, under-performing and/or problem employees take up a disproportionate amount of their manager’s time, therefore, it also reduces the ROI of the person’s manager (namely you).

Good hires are important to your department for two primary reasons.  First, is that each time a new employee is hired into a department, the interactions within the group can change.  A single new employee added to the mix can enhance the team’s cooperation and cohesiveness or if the wrong person is hired it can literally destroy the group’s positive dynamics and turn a very happy and productive group into one with infighting, backstabbing, and a low output.  Second, if the new employee has low productivity, which means a little more work for everyone else in the group, rather than a welcomed reduction in everyone’s workload.

Good hires are important to you as the hiring manager for three primary reasons. First, as a manager you are judged on your ability to make good decisions. That said, the people you hire will be a direct and continued reflection of your decision making capabilities. Second, you as a manager are judged on the productivity of your department and the morale of your employees.  A new hire can significantly affect your team’s productivity, both positively and negatively. Lastly, if you hire the wrong person, you will have to correct the problem, thus spending time and emotional energy dealing with a difficult employee issue.

The above thoughts on the importance of hiring good people suggests the following;

1. There is a high ROI related to spending the time and effort required to assure that you hire the right person.
2. Hiring the wrong person is a loss for everyone, including the person you hired.
3. Your hiring decisions can be directly related to your success or failure as a manager and dramatically (positively or negatively) effect your future at the company.
4. As a manager, learning how to hire the right people can be enormously advantageous to your career.

This blog is an excerpt from my weekly nationally syndicated column with GateHouse News Service. My new columns can be found in GateHouse Media publications throughout the United States.

Until next time, manage well, manage smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter at @EricPBloom

Mr. Hillier explained that historically, data centers have been run using a combination of:

• Local corporate knowledge – The technical equivalent of knowing where the issues historically tend to be and where the conceptual bodies are buried
• Device specific analytics – Describing the technical health and throughput of a specific physical device
• Process analytics – Describing how well specific process or technical function was performing, such as data communication or CPU utilization

He went on to say that technologies now exist to allow those managing data centers to more easily look at them as a whole, rather than, as a sum of its parts. In essence, it can be managed more as a single entity than as a collection of connected components. This capability allows oversight to be more of a science, based on data, and a little less of an art, based more on segmented analytics and gut feeling. This is particularly true in organizations moving their computing capacity from a traditional computing environment to a virtual and private cloud type infrastructure.

Given this backdrop, I then asked Mr. Hillier what effect these technical advances would have on those working to manage these environments. His thoughts were as follows:

Tools Knowledge: As data centers become more centrally controlled through software, people will have to gain an understanding and working knowledge of these new monitoring, control and analytics tools.

Industry Knowledge: As the quality and quantity of these tools continues to accelerate, those making hardware and software purchasing decisions have many more choices. Certainly having multiple products to choose from has its advantages, but it brings with it the risk of unknowingly selecting products that lock you into a specific long term technical solution which could be very difficult and expensive to unwind.

Broad Technical Understanding: Certainly people will continue to have a particular technical specialty, but this more centralized and integrated approach to data center management brings with it the need to have a deeper understanding of other technicalities. For example, people working to manage virtualized hardware will have to have a deeper understanding of data communications, CPU utilization, and capacity planning.

Strong People Skills: Crossing technical specialties brings with it the need to cross organizational silos and participating in more teams. This increased need for teamwork brings with it a higher necessity for effective interpersonal skills. That is to say, there are slowly but surely becoming fewer jobs where you can simply sit in the corner of the room and do your job. As a result, more than ever, your ability to communicate with others will have a direct effect on your professional success.

Internal Sales Skills: Yes, sales skills. Sales-type skills are required for two specific reasons, namely, change and growth. Regarding change, if you are the one responsible for selecting and/or implementing these new data center wide tools, you are changing the jobs and potentially the professional destinies of the techies that will be using these tools. Don’t be mistaken, effective change management is partially good sales techniques. Regarding growth, if you are using these tools to build a state-of-the-art virtual cloud infrastructure, you may need to convince programmers and project owners alike that your new environment is industrial strength and is advantageous to use. This also requires a certain level of sales savvy.

Acronym Aware: This wider interaction with people from other parts of your IT group brings with it the need to know the jargon used in all these various technical silos. The reason is that if you don’t understand the jargon, not only will you not understand what people are talking about, but you will not be taken seriously by the people who use it as part of their daily speech.

Holistic Mind Set: Lastly, you must broaden your mind, not only your understanding and your skills. Using great tools like those offered by CiRBA and others requires not just an understanding of how the tool works, it also requires an understanding of how data centers as a whole work. This broadened technical vision is easy for some, hard for others, but doable for all.

Andrew Hillier is co-founder and CTO of CiRBA and can be found at www.CiRBA.com

This blog is based on a column I wrote last year, as part of my weekly blog in ITworld.com. For my most recent IT World blogs, go to http://www.itworld.com/blogs/eric-bloom

Until next time, work hard, work smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter @EricPBloom

Thank you for emailing me your question and good for you for wanting to help your company and your fellow employees. As IT professionals, particularly in a big company, it’s easy to forget that the work we do can directly impact both the company’s expenses and its revenues.

Before discussing these items one at a time, let’s first talk about IT’s role within the company. Our job as IT professionals is to provide technology to all parts of the company in a way that enhances our fellow employees’ productivity and effectiveness. What this means is that, by definition, we help

• Sales people make more sales
• Finance people better manage company-wide budgets and expenses
• Customer Service people better serve company customers
• Human Resources people maximize employee value
• Compliance better watch over internal activities
• Manufacturing build better products
• . . . and every other internal group maximize the quality and quantity of their work

I know that this is true, because if we didn’t, then IT would not exist as an internal business function. Therefore, IT, like no other organization can help the company succeed in every aspect of its professional endeavors.

So, to answer your question, you and your fellow IT professionals can truly have a significant impact on your company as described below:

There are a number of ways that you can help reduce company expenses. The most obvious, of course, is for the IT group to work to reduce its overall cost to the company. The standard cast of characters that are included in this type of cost reduction include:

• Retiring hardware and software that is no longer used and/or could be efficiently done in other ways.
• Reduce project scope using the 80/20 rule. Namely, 80% of the value of a project can generally be received from 20% of its overall effort.
• . . . and certainly countless other items, most of which are probably already being deployed within your organization.

Now let’s discuss the true ways IT can help minimize the company’s overall expenses. Note that these items are not related to reducing our budget, they are related to us doing our job and doing it well.

• Work proactively with our business partners to reduce their costs through easy-to-employ inexpensive technologies. For example, writing new reports that will save people from doing things manually, cleaning up people’s PCs so they run more quickly.
• Be an agent of change. Maximizing process efficiently is a core competency of most IT professionals. Work with your business partners to help them design better ways to get their work done. The longstanding/old name for this is Process Reengineering.

On the revenue side, there are also a number of things that IT can to help maximize company sales and other moneys coming in. They include the development and enhancement of sales customer service tools that help maximize the effectiveness of the company’s sales force. These tools include:

• Customer Resource Management (CRM)
• Pre-sales tools, such as custom calculators, product demo tools
• Easy to use order management tools helping to facilitate efficient order taking
• Website-based order placement to allow customers to directly order products without salesperson intervention
• Customer Service tools that allow people within the Customer Service group to more quickly help customers solve their issues. This has a three way benefit of making customers happy, reducing customer service costs, and allows customer service people to back sell additional products and services to in-calling customers.

In closing, yes, all of these ideas take company money and resources to accomplish; neither of which your company can currently spare if they are having financial difficulty. If you, and your fellow IT professionals, have this headset, many small, impactful changes can probably be made, each of which may be small, but collectively could provide great current and future value to the company you love.

This blog is based on a column I wrote last year, as part of my weekly blog in ITworld.com. For my most recent IT World blogs, go to http://www.itworld.com/blogs/eric-bloom

Until next time, work hard, work smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter @EricPBloom

With that said, then why am I writing this column now?  The answer is that many jobs have work cycles.  Accountants tend to be busiest at the beginning of each month, when trying to close the books from the previous month.  Sales people tend to be busiest just before month end trying to close deals before the period ends.   Other jobs also have daily, weekly, monthly, and/or yearly busier times and slower times.

This column discusses things you can do to help your team renew their energy, maximize their productivity, and maintain their motivation during the less crazy times in their natural business cycles.

To help renew your team’s energy:

1. Celebrate the end of each difficult/hectic business cycle with a department lunch.  If you don’t have the funding, make it a “pot-luck” lunch where everyone brings a different type of food to share.  If you don’t think a pot-luck will go over with your group, you can just have everyone bring their own lunch.
2. Have a speaker come to an extended staff meeting, teaching your team something new.  It could be an internal company executive from another part of the company, a vendor, or even a senior member in your team.
3. Show videos at an extended staff meeting.  This is easy and free.  Do a little research on You Tube and find instructional and entertaining videos that relate to your team’s profession and activities.
4. Have a “Floating Friday Afternoon”, allowing one or more of your staff to leave work early, based on some pre-organized and fair scheduled basis.

To help maximize your team’s productivity

1. Have a brainstorming session analyzing how existing internal department processes can be streamlined.
2. Have a brainstorming session analyzing what new processes should be created.
3. Have a “Clean your office day”.  This may sound a little odd as a productivity tool, but generally speaking, people can be more productive if your personal workspace and department workspace are clean and orderly.  For example, it’s easier to find new printer toner cartridges if they are in right place.

To help maintain their motivation

1. Cross-train members of your team on each others’ jobs.  This has the dual benefit of providing free training to your team and increasing your future job assignments as their manager.
2. Have mini one-on-ones with your team members with the goal of helping them to grow professionally.
3. Have your boss come to a staff meeting and answer company-related questions for your team.

If your team is working full throttle on an ongoing basis, the thought of downtime to do any of the above activities seems unrealistic.  For your team, the above activities can help save your team members from burning out, or at least burning out as quickly.  That said, try to do abbreviated versions of the above activities. Rather than doing an extended staff meeting with a speaker, have a speaker for 15 minutes during a staff meeting.  Call an impromptu staff meeting on a Thursday afternoon from 4:30 to 5:00 and instead of talking about business, show a short five minute business oriented video on You Tube, thank your team for doing great work and working so hard and send them home twenty minutes early.

These types of activities, big and small, can help make work a little more fun and a little more interesting.  This in turn will help you energize your team, thus maximizing their productivity, motivation, and overall morale.

This blog is an excerpt from my weekly nationally syndicated column with GateHouse News Service. My new columns can be found in GateHouse Media publications throughout the United States.

Until next time, manage well, manage smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter at @EricPBloom

In each of these interviews I ask two questions:

1. How did you get to your level of professional success?
2. What advice could you give my readers to enhance their professional careers?

To begin this new series, I had the great honor and pleasure of interviewing Marilyn Smith, the former CIO of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Throughout her impressive career, she also held CIO and/or very senior executive positions inside and outside IT for financial services giants such as John Hancock, Liberty Mutual, and Hanover Insurance.

Question #1: How did you get to your level of professional success?

Ms. Smith answered this question with a combination of personal observations and philosophies. She began by saying that she was always willing to do the hard jobs that others were not willing to do. Over her career this has included challenges such as:

• Stepping in to save projects that were headed toward failure prior to her taking on the leadership role
• Widening her professional experience and perspective by being willing to step outside her comfort zone as opportunity and necessity required
• Moving from IT into an executive business role and then back into IT with a user’s perspective of the IT function

In additional to a willingness to take on professional challenges, she also described the true importance as an IT professional:

• To strive to do your very best to support the business goals of the internal clients you serve, not just as a service provider, but as a business partner in the success of the overall organization.
• To strive to maximize the internal efficiency of IT. This not only adds to the credibility and cost effectiveness of the IT function, it also provides great value to the overall organization being served.

From a personal philosophical perspective, she also stressed the importance and value of a:

• Diversity of professional experience
• Taking jobs that best match your skills and abilities
• Being open to learning and doing new things
• Building strong, long lasting, professional relationships based on respect and trust
• The power of synchronicity, related to opportunistic career advancement
• Running your life and profession with passion, not fear

Question #2: What advice could you give my readers to enhance their professional careers?

When asked this second question, Ms. Smith provided a number of insightful suggestions. These suggestions, not surprisingly, were very consistent with the professional philosophies previously mentioned, that helped guide her professional life. Her suggestions were:

• Volunteer for hard projects. Your reputation will be built on the challenges you are willing to take on and the quality of results you achieve.
• If possible, exit and then return to IT. Your time working outside of IT will enhance your perspective on how to best serve your internal clients and also position you to be a business partner, rather than a service provider to other business areas.
• Be willing to go outside your comfort zone to learn new things, gain a diversity of experience, and grow professionally.
• Know that a diversity of experience helps your ability to communicate with those both inside and outside of IT.
• Work in an industry that matches your skill, abilities, and interests.
• Form and maintain long-lasting professional relationships.

In closing, if I may impart a personal observation; I believe that other reasons that helped propel Ms. Smith, and also will help propel you, to the highest ranks of our profession is her consistency of philosophy and action, high personal energy level, and an obvious passion for her chosen profession.

This blog is based on a column I wrote last year, as part of my weekly blog in ITworld.com. For my most recent IT World blogs, go to http://www.itworld.com/blogs/eric-bloom

Until next time, work hard, work smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter @EricPBloom

Let’s begin with the old saying that “God gave us one mouth and two ears, therefore, we should listen twice as much as we talk.”  This advice is not only good for life in general, it’s also sound management practice. In fact, listening closely to the people who report to you has the following advantages:

• Shows you care about what they have to say
• Provides you a better understanding of the issues within your department
• Allows you to make better decisions because of your deeper understanding of your department’s issues
• Enhances your ability to make informative and detailed status reports
• Facilitates your ability to write quality performance reviews

Next, and to the official topic at hand, the ability to know what questions to ask and how to ask them can be of great value to you as a manager.  That said, the questions that manager ask their staff generally falls into the following categories:

• Project/Task related questions (“How-to” and “Do you know”, etc.)
• Status related (“Project Status”, “Client Status”, “Did you do”, “How did it go”, etc.)
• Schedule/Logistically oriented (“Can you work this weekend?”, “Can you help on this project?”)
• Personal growth related (“Do you understand”, “What would you like to learn?”, “What type of projects do you like to work on?”, etc.)
• General management (“What can I do to help make you more successful in your job?”, “What resources do you need to be successful?”, etc. )

The question categories listed above can loosely be divided into two types;

1. What the employee can do for you and/or tell you
2. What you can do for the employee

As a manager, both of these question types are of extreme importance to the health of your team.

The first group (project, status, and schedule) are different types of information you need to know to properly run your department. The project/tasks related questions are important because, as a manager, you don’t stop learning about your professional area of expertise.  Asking your staff for a lesson on how to use a new technology or perform a task you are not familiar with or have forgotten how to do show humbleness and that you respect your staff’s skill set.  It also saves you from having to figure it out on your own.  The second question type, the most obvious of the group, provides you with the information required to keep up to date on your department’s projects and properly write informed status reports. The third question type is only partially a question and is most likely a nice way of telling them you need them to do something or that unless major family plans are in place that you want them to work the weekend.

The second group of questions (personal growth and general management) is enormously important because it helps keep you in tune with your team’s needs in regard to training, professional opportunities, career aspirations, and general issues.  Without asking these types of questions on an occasional basis, your staff may begin to feel neglected and taken advantage of.  This in turn can cause morale issues, reduced motivation, lower team productivity, and employee attrition.

In closing, as a manager, your department’s most valuable resource is its people.  They are performing the tasks required to keep the function running. They are also a source of both technical skill and technical knowledge. All that said, don’t underestimate the Return On Investment (ROI) related to the time spent understanding your staff and caring for their needs.

This blog is an excerpt from my weekly nationally syndicated column with GateHouse News Service. My new columns can be found in GateHouse Media publications throughout the United States.

Until next time, manage well, manage smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter at @EricPBloom

There are two things I loved about this reader’s question. First, is that the reader understands the value of connecting with other likeminded professionals within your company. Second, is that the person has the motivation to try to find a way to make these professional connections. Good for you! Your perception and desire for action can be of great value to you professionally.

If you work for a large IT organization, chances are there are people around the country or around the world who are using the same technologies and/or are doing the same type of work you are. One way to raise your head above the crowd within your organization and simultaneously position yourself as an internal thought leader and potential candidate for promotion is to form an internal “Community of Practice”. Using external professional association terms, this is the equivalent of a professional Special Interest Group (SIG).

The goals of this internal community could be any or all of the following, based on your particular area of technical expertise:

• Create and or share internal best practices
• Reuse of internally developed software
• Crowd sourcing to solve difficult issues and/or design specialized algorithms
• Resource sharing of hardware and software licenses
• Informal mentoring of newer, less experienced, professionals
• Informal job posting helping to facilitate promotions and lateral moves

There are also many additional benefits to you personally as the leader/facilitator of the group:

• Provides you a great opportunity to meet others in your role across the company, because they will be calling you with questions on how to join and participate
• Puts you at the center of internal activity related to your area of expertise.
• Provides you a good reason to call anyone in the company related to your profession. This is a great way for you to build your professional network without looking totally self-serving.
• It gives you the opportunity to truly do something great for your company.

The creation and facilitation of an Internal Community of Practice is much easier now than it would have been ten or fifteen years ago because of the advent of internal social media tools, such as Yammer, SharePoint, and internal wikis, blogs and discussion boards. If one or more of these tools are currently used internally, you can piggyback on their functionality and almost instantaneously have a platform to begin building your community.

The goal and danger for you is that you would want to be the leader/facilitator of the group, not the authoritative voice of right and wrong. Your job is to get the community talking to others in a way that’s best for the company and hopefully for them personally. If you try to impose your points of view or personal agenda on the community it can easily sour and dramatically hurt your reputation within the company. Your internal visibility and value to the company will rise as the value of the community gains strength, activity, and momentum. Certainly be an active participant in the group, but don’t be its dictator.

What’s interesting about starting and helping run these types of communities, whether inside or outside your company, even if you do it with no thought of personal gain, is that it’s truly incredible how much it can benefit you personally:

• You will meet and get to know people you otherwise, most likely, would have never met.
• You will become a more knowledgeable professional, almost by osmosis, just by reading people’s posts, answering people’s questions, and being central to the concerns, issues, and triumphs of those doing work similar to your own.
• You will learn how to be a leader, even if you don’t aspire to attain a leadership role.
• Lastly, you will have the satisfaction of doing something good for the world, by helping the careers of those you work with, your IT organization, and your company as a whole.

This blog is based on a column I wrote last year, as part of my weekly blog in ITworld.com. For my most recent IT World blogs, go to http://www.itworld.com/blogs/eric-bloom

Until next time, work hard, work smart, and continue to grow.

Eric Bloom
President and CTO
Manager Mechanics, LLC

www.ManagerMechanics.com
www.MMTrainingTechnologies.com
www.EricPBloom.com
Also, follow Eric on Twitter @EricPBloom