The Quad Chart – The Executive View

THE DISCUSSION

I use a number of things to track projects; the Engineering Plan, the Stop Light Chart, and the Quad Chart. The Engineering Plan is the big picture tracking tool I use to track all projects. It’s more high level and has very little detail. The Stop Light Chart tracks each project down to the task level. To offer a very short and workable Executive level view I use the Quad Chart. The quad chart along with the Stop Light Chart are extensions of the Engineering Plan. They fit nicely together and are a quick and easy monitoring system for the IT manager. I especially like the Stop Light chart because red really jumps out at you.

Remember, delegate the work on these down to your team. (Some of you are hitting your forehead and saying of course delegate this down but some of you know exactly what I am saying.)

THE ACTION

-The Title should be self explanatory but should track with what is on the Engineering Plan and Stop Light Chart. Include what the project is and why it is being done. Something like “all switches in building 100 are past usable life and need replacement”.

-The Timeline should track generally with the Stop Light Chart but doesn’t require the step by step actions. Something like “install new network switches in building 100” versus breaking down by floor or switch node. Put a date in red if it is overdue.

-The Discussion would be key points that need to be reported. Such as “funding approved 2 July” or “switches arrived 1 August”. Highlight in red those actions that need management needs to remain aware. Again big picture items.

-The Current Status would be items that need to be reported since the last update. Highlight in red those actions that need management attention.

-Download your blank Quad Chart here.

HINT: Put all your projects quad charts together and present to your higher level manager. My supervisor is not technical and this provides him a fine overview of what is happening in his area of responsibility.

Take the time to ask all the right questions. (This is the third of three posts on how I conduct the IT interview).

THE DISCUSSION

All of my interviews are all primarily behavior based interviews. Sure I ask the “why are you looking for a new job” and “where do you want to be at in 5 years” type questions but trying to determine how a candidate will react in certain situations is to me a key to hiring.

My best discovery was the book High-Impact Interview Questions: 701 Behavior-Based Questions to Find the Right Person for Every Job by Victoria A. Hoevemeyer. This book offers a great explanation on how to conduct a behavior based interview. But the best part is the author offers hundreds and hundreds of example questions. All questions are broken out by category such as customer focus, decision making, leadership, etc. The book even offers up examples of interview guides. This is something that every interviewer needs in his or her toolkit.

I use these questions in all of my interviews and I have a 100% “great” hire percentage for the ten folks I have hired since I started using this book about four years ago. In fact I have actually not hired about 3 candidates based on their answers to some of these questions. Prior to implementing the suggestions in the book my success rate was only about 75 percent.

Remember only 1 or 2 poor hires is failure and can have a negative effect on the whole team.

THE ACTION

-Download some interview-questions. Notice how some of the questions are broken out in to categories.

-Preview the book on Books 24/7 or Safari Books. If you have an Amazon Kindle or an iTouch with the Kindle app you can download the first chapter from Amazon for free.

-Purchase the book and read from cover to cover.

-Determine the questions you want to ask you candidates. Ask all the candidates the same questions. This gives you a great cross flow of how each candidate answers.

HINT: Purchase this book and improve your interview success.

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-

Do you look the part of the IT manager?

I dress up for work. I always wear a long sleeve shirt and tie. On occasion I even wear a suit. Even though I don’t dress up too much since after all I am an IT guy.

Back in the day when I wore a uniform I had the choice of the green one or the blue one. Most of the time I chose the short sleeve blue one since it was cooler. I didn’t have any fashion sense but I really didn’t need any. The blue or the green one worked.

Then along came military retirement and a new civilian job. I now had to learn how to dress myself. Since my wife wasn’t the type to dress me and since they don’t make Garanimals clothes for IT professionals my wife decided to help me along with my fashion sense. She bought me two books:

Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion

Men’s Wardrobe (Chic Simple)

Both these offer a great overview on how to get a fashion sense. I also like the numerous hints such as wearing a black belt with black shoes.

Another great resource for those just starting out is J.C. Penneys. Most shirts show a matching tie. Don’t make the mistake of buying the same tie design in different colors. Not exactly Garanimals but the closest an IT guy can get.

Remember dress for the next promotion but don’t over dress for your current position. A Helpdesk manager shouldn’t wear $300 Brooks Brothers suits.

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-

Don’t hire an IT tech alone. (This is the second of three posts on how I conduct the IT interview).

THE DISCUSSION

Some companies have a fairly strict process on how to hire. Some companies have a process but with plenty of personalization for the business unit. And finally others have no process other then work with HR on the requisition and let them know who you want to hire. I have a fairly simple hiring process; I like to get as many people involved as possible.

As far as I am concerned hiring is one of the most important, if not the most important, things a manager does. It’s simple. Once they are hired they’re yours whether a fine employee or a poor employee. Your job as a manager is to increase the odds that you will be getting a fine employee.

Get as many people involved, both inside and outside your company, as possible during the hiring process.
Remember, the more the better to increase your odds.

THE ACTION

-Have your subordinate manager make the interview selections from the referral list (see my previous post) and make the interviews. For a non manager IT position they would make what I call “technical interview”.

-During a technical interview the manager assesses not only the person but the technical skills of the applicant. I have actually seen and used ExamCram or similar questions to assess skills.

-The initial subordinate manager also calls all references. In the case of a government job the supervisor should call as many of the applications past supervisors as possible.

-Call around and see if anyone knows this person. Look both inside and outside the company. The IT world is not as large as you think and folks know each other. I’ve shut down about 50 possibilities just from this step. One of the most intriguing comments was, “You will have to see if he will be a good organizational fit”. You make the call on whether you would have hired this person.

-Once the subordinate manager narrows his list down to 3 to 5 or so he passes them up to the next level manager for interviews.

-After the technical interview the up level managers conduct the more traditional interview. I call this the “do I like you” interview. Ask your questions and make your choices.

-After all interviews are complete all managers gather together to discuss the best choices. Make sure to rate each applicant against the job criteria. Not against each other. The first question to ask all the interviewers is a recommendation to hire yes or no.

-Make your final choice.

HINT: The final choice belongs to the hiring manager. This is not a vote among the interviewers. All they do is recommend. Ultimate responsibility on the hire lies with the hiring manager.

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-

I wonder how many names will be on this referral list? (This is the first of three posts on how I conduct the IT interview).

THE DISCUSSION

My last hiring action had 97 names. I was told of one action in a sister unit that had over three hundred names. At my last company my lists would routinely hit 100 plus. We had an open requisition for the Helpdesk and we routinely received up to 20 per week. And these are just the names that get past Human Resources. A coworker actually asked how long it would take to interview 97 people. Well, since my interviews typically last over an hour how about 97 hours. Probably not the best of ideas.

There has to be a better way to trim down a long list of resumes to that top 10 or so names to actually interview. It’s pretty simple for me. I use the attached Evaluation Criteria spreadsheet to rate specific factors I am looking for in a candidate. I’ll add and change factors depending on the vacancy. I can also rate specific criteria separately if needed. For example if you were hiring a manager you could sort on the Management Experience line and look at the top rated in that field.

Remember, tweak the factors depending on the opening.

THE ACTION

-Determine the criteria factors you will need for the open requisition. Download the Evaluation Criteria worksheet here.
-Update the worksheet with your factors.
-Weight those factors you think are more important. On my sheet I rated Management Experience, Project Management, and IA Background as times 2 factors.
-Read each resume. Fill in that candidates name and rate each factor. One is “Low” and 5 is “Most”.
-Multiply those weighted factors with the correct weight.
-Sort by total points or any factor to determine those top 10 you want to interview.

Hint: I keep all factors on my worksheet and only rate those factors that are generic to the position I am hiring. For example if the position was non management I would leave the management related fields blank.

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-
Evaluation Criteria

Hiring is the most important job for an IT manager

DISCUSSION:

How much time do you spend on hiring? Do you share the hiring process with your subordinate managers or your branch staff? Do you have a process in place that you follow for every hire or do you reinvent the wheel for every hire. Do you call all the references? Do you ask around in your industry to see if the candidate should be hired? Do you search the internet for info on the candidate?

Hiring is important. Hiring is very important. Once you hire someone you are, for want of a better term, stuck. So doesn’t it make sense to spend the maximum amount of time on all new hires? Think about your last good hire. Now think about your last bad hire. What did you do different or was it just luck of the draw. Think about someone you didn’t hire who ended up being a problem. You often hear after the hire that someone in your company knew this person. If only the hiring manager had known.

You have to have a process that involves more than just you. It has to be a repeatable process that you use over and over. As you continue to repeat this process it gets easier and hiring gets better. No starting from scratch every time. Management isn’t fun. Management is a set of repeatable processes that you use over and over. Remember that standard operation procedure you have your server folks use when they build a server. This is the same concept. Do the same thing over and over and refine as you go along.

Remember using a repeatable process you will see your good hire percentage continue to increases. In future posts I will get specific on my hiring process.

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-

But I’m an IT Manager.

THE DISCUSSION

I like Facebook. In fact I’ve become reacquainted with five old high school mates via Facebook. I don’t use MySpace since I have a Facebook account. There’s only so many sites I can keep up with. I’ve looked at YouTube videos. Mostly old Richard Pryor videos. I’m a big LinkedIn user. I have joined a number of Groups and continue to update my profile, post comments, and participate in Answers. I actually spend quite a bit of time on the small number of social network sites I have joined.

All of these sites are blocked by my network administrators. I THINK THAT IS A GREAT IDEA.

In a perfect IT world and as an IT manager I’d block all sites and only open sites by exception. Unfortunately users do silly things and network security can become an issue. Oh, well, I’ll just send a touch labor tech over to remove that adware. So much for the perfect IT world. But I digress.

Twitter is another thing. Twitter is not blocked. I won’t talk about the security issues of Twitter; the hijacked accounts, the clickjacking attacks, the possible security issues with Google Docs, or the more then probable for official use only information about your company or business being spread by Tweet’s. I am more concerned about the management time spent and wasted by users on Twitter.

You’re an IT manager. If you are like me you have a 200-300 item to do/tracking list. You’re spending time fighting fires, working projects, supervising your direct reports, and doing all of the other things an IT manager does. So you have 100 friends on Twitter and follow perhaps another 100. How much time are you spending on Twitter? Can you afford to spend this time on Twitter? But it doesn’t take that much time, right. After all you only have 140 characters. So you work a little on a project, you Tweet, you work a little on a project, you Tweet, you work a little on a project, you Tweet. OK, so you get the picture.

As an IT manager, as I said above, your attention is already split on many things. Perhaps too many things. Twitter is a disruption to your daily work activities. You’re paid and expected to produce results. Twitter (or any similar other social networking site) reduces your effectiveness at work by splitting your attention in short tiny bursts. Using Twitter at work is, to put it simply, a distraction. You can’t perform at your peak if you constantly break your concentration.

Remember; after all, in today’s economy anything that makes you less effective needs to be trimmed from your daily work routine.

THE ACTION

Simple, don’t Tweet at work. Keep it at home and off work hours.

HINT: It’s time to trim.

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-

Sometimes an IT manger just has to lead to get things done.

THE DISCUSSION

I was hit with a drive-by tasking the other day. You know, one of those things that pop up at the end of the day (in this case 1645) while discussing something totally unrelated. The tasker started with “while I have you on the phone…”. Yes, nice and innocuous but then the hammer dropped. And since the requestor was a Commander I guess tag, I was it.

So I engaged and pealed back the onion. This was a two week old issue involving 4 different units and three different network shops. Yes, the Army has one big network but different units O&M the segments under their responsibility. Like all fine network techs they were working the issue. But like all fine network techs the issue was bouncing like a ping pong ball between the three shops. I know you’ve experienced this problem yourself. The issue, while not a mission impact problem, affected multiple users. To make matters worse, this minor issue (I won’t even tell you what it was because you will laugh) had made its way up to a Brigadier General. Now I had a star waiting for an answer.

That night I made calls to the three network techs working the issue to get a status. The next morning I did the same and realized that overnight not a lot of progress had been made on the problem. Ok, I let them all know this was their number one priority and that a General was waiting for the fix action. I next sent an email to the three letting them know it was the priority. I also CC’d the management chain in each unit to ensure I had their support. I also asked for status updates from the three techs every two hours. Don’t forget only one of the units was mine.

After four hours the network configuration causing the problem had been found. After six hours the problem was fixed.

Remember; problems need fixes and sometimes you have to step outside your area of responsibility to make things happen. Sometimes I’d rather beg for forgiveness then ask permission.

THE ACTION

1. Engage an issue when needed.
2. Don’t let problems become ping pong balls.
3. Engage higher management even if they are outside your organization. What they know won’t hurt them especially if you have a plan.
4. Let the techs know you are watching and leading. Most of the times problems find solutions.
5. When you find a problem be a leader.

HINT: Most of the time folks want to do their best and work a problem but they just need a leader to make a decision.

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-

The Life of the IT Manager.

THE DISCUSSION

Yes, you’ve been in IT forever and have been an IT manager for years. Perhaps one of your subordinates just told you something that just doesn’t sound right. Perhaps they did something that just doesn’t seem right. There’s nothing concert, you just feel it in your gut. So what do you do? In most cases trust your gut.

In my previous job I had an office right next to the server room. My desk was positioned where I could see everybody who went into the server room. One day I heard my top network tech coming running down the hall and burst into the room. A few minutes later the tech came out o f the room as if nothing happened. I wondered what the issue was but not being a micro manager I figured the tech would let me know if there were problems. A couple of days later the same scenario happened. This time I was concerned but again thought the tech will let me know if there is an issue. Well a couple of days later it happened a third time. I finally reacted to what my gut was telling me the whole time. The tech had been tweaking the main premise router and the tweaks caused the whole command to lose internet access. Needless to say we put a stop to these types of changes. If the change had not been easy to undo there would have been a multiple user outage and the tech wouldn’t have been the one to feel the initial pain.

Remember; in my experience IT techs our devious souls and love to tweak things in hopes to make things better and faster. I want them to do that but there is a process to ensure no user or customer impact.

THE ACTION

The action is simple. Trust your gut and investigate right away those things that don’t seem right.

HINT: Trust your gut the first time and don’t wait.

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-

Do you really know what your customers think?

THE DISCUSSION

When was the last time you conducted a customer survey? If you already conduct surveys when was the last time you actually looked at the results and made management decisions based on these results? When was the last time you actually talked to a customer either in person or by phone? Even more basic (you have already heard this one) who are your customers? I know some of you are saying “I’m the IT guy, I don’t work with customers. I just keep the hardware running and the applications working”. Hmm.

As a government IT manager I may not have the “traditional” money paying customer but I have customers. I know who my customers are; the ones internal to my organization and the ones external. Do you know yours? It’s my job to keep them all happy and informed. So why this topic today. Well, last week we had a VIP with email and VTC problems tell us that “IT is broke”. Ouch! The problems were easily fixed and he is now happy but “IT is broke” hurts. The question I asked myself is are we doing enough to manage our customers and the customer expectations? The short answer is obviously not.

Recently I read an interesting article related to this subject What It Takes to Succeed Now as a CIO. There are two main customer items to note in the article. First, 53 percent of CIOs said acquiring and retaining customers was a business driver important to IT decisions. Yet 49 percent of these CEOs rated IT’s performance against this driver as “fair” or “poor” while 5 percent said IT did not support this driver at all. Second, out of the top ten IT agenda items business executives rated the acquiring and retaining customers driver as number one. CIOs rated this in a tie for eighth. Ouch again.

So why the disparity between the CEO and IT? Well, I believe it all goes to my question, when was the last time you talked to your customer? Again, both internal and external. The same article mentions that IT leadership only spends 23 percent of their time talking to non IT executive leadership. That may be enough but I still need to think on that figure. Is a quarter of your time enough time spent discussing and understanding this customers needs and expectations.

The most telling number in the article shows that IT leadership only spends 11 percent of their time talking to external partners or customers. Note that the figure includes time talking to partners; it’s not just customer time. It that enough time when the number one CEO driver is acquiring and retaining customers?

After reading the article and outlining, as shown below, the things I already have in place I believe I can do better working with customers and their expectations. I already have a couple of ideas and after I test and refine them provide an update.

Remember; we have to align the IT strategy with the business strategy. Note that the article mentions the number one CIO IT driver was improving end-user workforce productivity (this was number 4 on the CEO list).

THE ACTION

1. Develop an online customer survey. The simpler the better. I use the “rate this item from 1-5″. This seems to work fairly well and gives fine survey results.
2. Ensure this new survey exports the online data in a spreadsheet or database format.
3. Include a comment area where the customer can write in free text.
4. Insure that all customers who call in a trouble ticket receive a “Your ticket is closed” verification email.
5. Include the link to the survey in all “closed” ticket emails.
6. Assign one person in your organization to be the survey master. This person will consolidate the data and compile in an easy to understand executive format. This person also works up the initial analysis of the data which is presented to management.
7. Management looks at the data with one thought; an action plan. What is shown in the data that is actionable?
8. Develop an action plan, assign a point of contact, and move out.
9. Follow up, follow up, and follow up.

HINT: Remedy can easily be configured to include a link in emails to your survey (you have a Remedy programmer correct?).

-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-