Real World IT

Introducing The Secretary Of State For IT

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 21:54:00 +0000

Wouldn’t that be great? Imagine if we actually had someone at the top table focussed on making sure IT was done right inside and outside government. Not some part-time special adviser, but a real cabinet minister with a department staffed full of IT specialists.

Why you ask? Well, for some time I’ve read the stories about how much government wastes on IT and how a big proportion of that waste is spent paying for vendors to make a complete pig’s ear of every government IT contract they take on. I know quite a few people working in government IT departments and they’ve told me a big problem for them is the lack of people working in IT inside the civil service. You see they all got outsourced, well almost all of them.

I won’t go into the full tale of woe that is the usual story of outsourcing in IT – that’s for another post. But the two biggest problems that the civil service were left with was a dearth of people capable of supervising the massive IT programmes that still needed to be run, and the vendors that were brought in to run them.

Which leads us back to my solution – create a department that is totally focussed on IT. Initially this would be just to get government IT programmes back on track and budget, but would also fold in general industry governance and best practices currently under the remit of the quangos like Office of Government Commerce (OGC).

Yes, it would cost money to establish and run, but I bet you it would cost a great deal less than the amounts wasted every year in programme delays and cancellations, budget over-runs and poorly implemented systems that cause more problems than they solve. You would also get around the perception that IT isn’t a core business function as it would be a no-brainer for the Department of IT.

Seriously, as society's levels of use and dependence on IT grows, and are forecast to grow exponentially in the future, why wouldn’t this be in everyone’s interest? I’m not suggesting this will solve all the problems associated with large IT programmes in government or other business sectors, but it has to be a step in the right direction.

Sadly, with the current UK government’s desire to cut the size of government down significantly I don’t see this getting a look in any time soon, but it does tick the box of cutting down waste, so just maybe some one will see the sense…

Connecting with your business is the future for IT

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:18:00 +0000

Now that you’ve started connecting with the various business groups in your organisation, and are getting your geeks business savvy, it’s time to get yourself included in more of their processes and plans. One way to succeed at this is to show you will add something they don’t already have, and that they need it.

A good example of the above is to find a connection between the metrics your IT group gathers and the business scorecard/KPIs. My experience has told me that most business people have had some IT guy totally overwhelm them with data in a presentation at some time in their past and are wary of any IT stats. Instead, spend some time studying the key business scorecards to find the areas where your measurements can be correlated with changes in key business metrics. This is where the hard work begins; because you must make sure you present the connection using a style and language understood by non-technical business people.

The moment you can show that the work your organisation does directly affects the key business numbers then your value inside the business will rise. With this level of engagement it shouldn’t be hard for you to start showing where the your organisation is actually helping the overall bottom line through the work you’re doing. When you’ve achieved this level of business integration you should really celebrate with your team.

In A Crisis, Stop And Take A Deep Breath

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:25:00 +0000

Never confuse activity with achievement – a simple yet often misunderstood maxim. Especially when it seems Rome is burning down around you, but it’s precisely at that moment you should be thinking that way.

In the IT world the next crisis is usually just around the corner, or the next release away as we used to say. Even with all the best preparation in the world things still go wrong. By all means, have your disaster recovery and rollback processes in place, but unless you trigger them in a calm and controlled manner they’re just as likely to explode in your face as the thing that caused the initial crisis.

I always insisted that my teams practised a mantra of – “Stop, think, think again, deep breath, act, report outcome, repeat”. No matter how big the problem is or how senior the people shouting at you are, doing things without careful consideration so you appear to be “all over” the problem will just create more problems and work later.

I know from experience that the key to making this idea work is to have one person in charge of the crisis and only that person co-ordinates the work and communicates progress outside the group. The next most important thing to have in place is a tried and tested communication plan – if you’re making great strides in solving the problem but none of the right people know what and when they need to, then you may as well be doing nothing at all.

That’s it. Nothing earth shattering or outside the realm of common sense but it never surprises me how often Chicken Little takes over. How do you and your organisation deal with crises?

Accountability Is Your Responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:08:00 +0000

I recently read this article - “How to be Accountable and Hold Others Accountable” – from one of my favourite leadership blogs and it started me thinking about my past experiences with accountability. One point in particular really jumped out at me - “For leaders, accountability starts with looking in the mirror. Being accountable is our ticket to earning the right to hold others accountable.”

I completely agree. Otherwise you are simply wielding your power as the boss with no foundation, you’re just being the boss. That may be effective for you for a while but soon it will start to work against you.

Another key point Dan makes is to establish expectations. I alluded to this in an earlier post of mine titled - What’s Your Style – where I talked about how important it is for your team to know how you work and what you expect of them. If you set this out nice and early it will make it much easier for you later. The hard part with all of this is following through and actually holding someone accountable.

I believe it’s very important to act quickly, not unlike calling someone out for bad behaviour at work. If you wait a day or two, or even a week, then your chances of having an effective and productive conversation are pretty much nil. If you’ve made sure your expectations have been clearly laid out for the person or team involved and those expectations haven’t been met then you need to make sure they get that message. You should also make it clear what actions you intend to take as a consequence.

My approach is to pull people aside somewhere private and make sure they understand where they fell short, give them my feedback, and tell them what I intend to do. Obviously the actions taken will depend on the type and size of the piece of work, but the main thing to do is to act. It shouldn’t be in public, pulling people down in public never achieves a good result in my experience, so avoid it at all costs.

To summarise:

Set out your stall early be telling your team how you work and what your expectations are of them.
If you fall short yourself make sure you own up quickly.
If your expectations aren’t met, call it out straight away and act.

Anonymous Surveys Just Don’t Add Up

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 15:06:00 +0000

One of the greatest banes thrust upon the corporate world in the past 10 years has been the introduction of the anonymous staff survey. My experience of these has been that only one useful outcome was achieved as a result of the survey. That’s a pretty poor return over a decade.

Why, I hear you ask? For starters it’s because they tend to tell you what people don’t like about something or somebody, rather than what they do like. So rather than reacting to positive feedback, the only response is to negative feedback, which if you were well connected to your team or organisation you should know about anyway.

They’re often a comprehension exercise; the questions getting turned and twisted by increasing corporate political correctness. I’ve also seen questions that completely contradict each other, making the data useless. They also tend to be written by the HR department and they rarely have the foggiest notion of what’s actually going on within the workforce. (Another post I think).

The worst abuse of these surveys I’ve seen is their use in the measurement of individual managers. I’ve seen instances where decisions have been made on the capabilities/effectiveness of a manager based solely on the results of anonymous feedback. This usually leads to good people managers being lost.

With these surveys the focus should be on the analysis of the data and what trends it shows rather than using it as a measurement of an individual’s or team’s abilities. Rather than looking at each survey in isolation, they should be combined over a period of time with the desired outcome of identifying long-term trends for further action. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, the one time I’ve seen a useful outcome from anonymous surveys was when data was combined over 2 years (4 surveys), and a clear trend of unhappiness around work-life balance and workplace flexibility was identified. The result was a change to organisation policies in these areas which then showed up as a favourable trend in later surveys.

My message here is that you shouldn’t abdicate your responsibilities for managing your team to anonymous sources. They are simply tools to help you do your job. Nothing beats real hands-on work with your team, getting to know them as people and dealing with their highs and lows yourself.

Solid at the Core

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:06:00 +0000

I came across this great post today and felt I had to share it - Solid at the Core | Unfolding Leadership.

The key point from Dan's post I'd like to highlight is - "It’s a curious paradox, isn’t it, that vulnerability is strength. We tend to see things in reverse: we view our strengths as our vulnerabilities — and so we’ve learned to hide them." Never a truer phrase has been spoken.

As a leader of any organisation one of the greatest gifts you can bring to your team is to open up and share your vulnerabilities and personal stories of failure and recovery. It shows you as both human and someone they can relate to.

Give it a try next time you're speaking with your team.

Be careful of psychometric tests

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:56:00 +0000

I’ve had a few people mention to me lately that they’ve run across a number of organisations using psychometric tests like MBTI for recruitment purposes. I think this is a very dangerous road to follow, as do the Myers-Briggs people, who always stress that the test shouldn’t be used for these purposes.

My objection is two-fold. Firstly, these tests are indicators of personality type only, not a definitive personality categorisation. Secondly, it runs the risk of putting people into boxes before anyone has really got to know that person properly.

I’ve used MBTI, amongst other tools, as a useful guide for how to best work with people in my team. I’ve found it invaluable at times when my normal approach seemed to be rubbing someone up the wrong way. By modifying my own behaviour based on that person’s MBTI I found I could begin to build a successful working relationship with that person. Without that indicator I’d have got there eventually, I just saved us all time and possible grief by making use of a handy tool.

But I would never think to use it as some sort of selection tool or way of categorising people. Use your eyes, ears, experience, and judgement before you abdicate responsibility to a test. You won’t be disappointed.

Get your geeks business savvy

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:17:00 +0000

A big problem in a lot of IT organisations is that the people who have been your greatest assets can become your biggest problems as you realign IT to be part of the overall business.

IT techies are driven and excited by big-brain work, not by trying to work out how their pet projects add value to the bottom-line. They’ve often got to where they are through sheer brainpower, not by playing power politics, and have never thought about the business plan let alone seen it. Do any of the following conversation snippets ring a bell;

People skills? Why would I need them!
Look, if they don’t understand my idea they’re obviously too stupid to bother with!
It’s cutting edge, what more could they want!

If you’re like me, you’ve had many of these conversations and ‘enjoyed’ the frustration that comes with them. Now here’s the rub – unless you win these people over to a business-focussed way of thinking you are going to have to get replace them. No compromises or silly attempts at hiding them behind line managers; unless you replace these people they could take you down with them before you know it.

There are many ways to go about achieving this goal. One method I’ve used in the past was to bring key business leaders into my team meetings to present their latest plans. I regularly found that these presentations generated a lot of questions which gave me good opportunities to show how the work we were doing tied directly into the business plan. Another approach is to start taking your key people along to meetings you have with business teams so they’re exposed to your world more often.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have your key IT staff develop soft skills and business focus. It will definitely help your group to be seen as real partners by the business.

What’s your style?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:05:00 +0000

Do the people that work for you know your preferred style of working? If they don’t then I suggest you get cracking and tell them! How else can you hope to get the information you need to do your job in the right format and style, without wasting both your time and theirs by having to correct them? I believe this is one of the most overlooked areas for executives and leaders when they start a new job.

My preferred method is to have a simple Word or PowerPoint document that first gives an introduction to how my thought processes work, e.g. prefer brainstorming, use a whiteboard a lot, like to listen to ideas first before jumping in, etc. I think this is critical because it gives your team the ability to proactively manage early engagements with you and get everyone off to a good start.

The next thing in the document is an expectations setting exercise. Things like when you prefer to do your emails, whether you’re a morning or an afternoon person (I’m an afternoon person), when I’m not to be contacted, whether you like emails from your directs to include tags or keywords so you can quickly prioritise them, etc. It all may seem very basic but trust me, it works and quickly gets rid of any ambiguity.

I also include information around how I like data to be presented to me, how I like problems outlined and summarised, my preferred layout and style for presentations (I hate wordy slides that contain what should be the presentation script), and what things will probably push my buttons.

I know some people that think this sort of information is best learnt as you go along but in my experience that will almost always end in disaster.

Once you have your document put together I also recommend you post it in as public a forum as your organisation has. Don’t try and keep the information to a select few, let everyone know and it will make for a much smoother and happier workplace.

Mind the gap

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:04:00 +0000

One of the core skills you need as a leader of IT organisations is the ability to bridge the gap between the IT department and the business teams you support and/or partner with. In my experience this is one the most common areas for problems arising between the business and IT departments in any company or sector.

I’ve outlined below the key concepts I think are essential for success in this area.

Relationship building: Don’t turn up to meetings with business leaders expecting them to see you as a peer or equal; to most business people IT is simply a support function that doesn’t generate revenue. You have to win these people over and show that you deserve a place at the table with them.
Understand their pain: Don’t ever assume that what matters to you has any relevance to them. Ask questions about what they care about; and listen! If you go away and leave them with the feeling you’ve heard and understood them you’ll have gained a real foothold. Following on directly from this;
Bring something to the table: You have to come along to your meeting with something that business leader will value, and it has to be more than your goodwill and best intentions! If you don’t know what they value then ask around their team or peers, but you should have already worked this out (see point 2). All the ‘C’ and board-level people I know have very little patience or time for informational chats, so if you don’t have something valuable to bring along then cancel the meeting. They’ll appreciate it and you won’t earn a reputation as a time-waster.
Don’t be a bystander: This is aimed at board/staff meetings. If you’ve been invited along to one of these meetings for example, you don’t have the luxury of being able to hang out and observe proceedings a couple of times before you contribute. You have to be seen and heard, with quality, right from the start. There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander in any proper leadership meeting.
Build your network: Don’t just rely on meetings for your contact with key business leaders, get out there and mingle at events and trade shows. Creating a network of senior leaders across your company or business sector is the perfect way to increase the breadth of your knowledge, and to earn a reputation as someone that gets involved.
Find out their key success measures: What goals or key measurements are they using to gauge their success or progress? What does their scorecard look like? This is where you really have a great chance to show your value and keep your place on the team. You must find a way to add your department’s numbers to their scorecard, and do it in such a way that they make sense to the business people. By this I mean that it’s no use adding in the standard type of measurements IT teams use, like up-time or utilisation, you’ve got to find a way to make IT measurements show as business measurements. If you can show a direct link between changes in IT and business measurements then you’re really adding to the bottom line!
Be a two-way translator: You have to be able to speak with your IT people in a way that makes it possible for them to see how what they do makes a difference to the business people, in a way that makes sense to them. Equally, you have to be ready to counter the common belief that all IT people talk in jargon, by being able to describe IT concepts in a language the business people will understand. Once you’re doing that you’ve really begun to bridge the gap.

The days of the IT department as an island in any company are long gone. Don’t let yourself be turned into some castaway, get out there and make a difference to your business!

What’s your leadership story?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:33:00 +0000

One common failure of people in leadership positions is the lack of a compelling story about where they’re going and why. Rather than drawing their team into their vision they attempt through sheer force of will, excitement, or effort to make them see the way. This will always fail.

What you should be doing is seeking a compelling story for your vision and future direction that paints a picture capable of drawing your team into it, making them want to hear more, and ask questions of how and when rather than why. But don’t fall into the trap of drowning them in data or words, you must find a way of capturing their hearts and minds simply and quickly. I once heard a sales presentation where new sales people were told they must learn to “sell the sizzle, not the sausage” - that’s what you’re striving for here. You have to create an image that allows others to see and smell what you want, not show them a picture of how impressive their new office building will be.

Make sure you also include a sense of real stretch to reach the goal, if it’s not something that people feel will test them and give them a chance to grow then you’ll reduce your follower group rapidly.

The final element to your story should be a timeframe. If your vision is open-ended or so far into the future as to be hard for most people to imagine it’s attainment then you won’t get people’s buy-in.

The next time you set out a vision for your team or organisation, make sure you have your compelling story ready.

Don’t only bring me solutions!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:54:00 +0000

One of my least favourite management speak throwaway lines of recent years has been - "Don't bring me problems, bring me solutions!".

While it's clear to see what the intent of this statement is, I believe it completely misses out on one very important group of people - the people that can see there's a problem with something but just can't work out how to fix it.

Rather than have these people hang on to their knowledge of a problem until they can come up with an answer, I'd much rather them bring it to my attention so I can send it out to a broader audience that may well have the answer. I'm not asking for people to come to me and just whine, I'm looking for some well constructed reasoning behind why they believe there’s a problem, and as much data as possible to back their argument.

In my 25+ years of working in the IT industry, I've worked with plenty of smart people that didn't always find the problems, but when one was put in front of them they could take it to pieces and find the solution for it in record time.

How many problems do you think you might have missed by hiding behind this poorly thought out statement?

Let’s begin

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:49:00 +0000

This blog is all about my increasing frustration with double-talk and ‘management speak’ across the business world. It never ceases to amaze me how insidious it’s become.

I believe it’s harmful and too often used as a tool to cover the fact that people don’t actually have anything useful to say, or in fact have much idea of what they’re talking about. I’m also of the opinion that it’s most often used as a tool to obfuscate.

Please feel free to comment, I love a good debate, and I’m open to any recommendations of good articles focused in this area.