In this book, David McKean talks about the secret of good IT Management. The book offers insights into leadership and communication styles that are essential to make successful IT managers. It shows how desired results can be achieved by motivating an IT team using the ‘well formed outcome’ technique. The book is a great read for IT leaders wanting to build up their management skills.

Through chapters like ‘Team Leadership’ and ‘Business Relationship Management’ it shows how managers can bridge gaps within a team, leverage on qualities of team members and hone particular abilities of executives to create win-win situations in an organization.

–Harrison

IT Management

Contents

1	The secret to good IT management
2	What makes a successful IT manager?
2.1	Emotional intelligence
2.2	IT management styles
2.3	Successful CIO behaviours
2.4	Where successful IT managers spend their time
2.5	Changing your time profile
2.6	Make your changes count
3	Team Leadership
3.1	Recruit good people
3.2	IT organization
3.3	Create harmony
3.4	Creating a balance of skills
3.5	Set direction and objectives
3.6	Create good working conditions
3.7	Developing skills
3.8	Managing performance
3.9	Reward & recognition
4	Business relationship management
4.1	Building rapport & credibility
4.2	Understanding client priorities
4.3	Handling objections & gaining commitment
5	Working with senior execs – Networking & politics
5.1	Networking in general
5.2	Some facts of life before you start
5.3	Building your network
5.4	Be influential
5.5	When influence turns to power and politics
5.6	Do’s and don’ts for managing senior execs
6	In conclusion
6.1	Leadership opportunities
6.2	And finally
6.3	About the author

About the author and IT Leaders

David McKean is a former CIO, having worked for several multi-national companies around the world, including AT&T ventures in Asia, UPC Nederland in Holland and C&W UK. He is now the managing director of IT Leaders Ltd, a leading provider of IT management training. He has worked alongside some of the top IT leaders in the business and shared experiences with countless IT managers and CIO’s from around the world. It has helped him to understand why some IT professionals make it and others don’t IT Leaders runs public courses, distance learning programmes, blended learning and in-house courses. Public courses on IT Business Management and IT Leadership are run regularly at Henley on Thames in the UK, New York in the US, Dubai in the UAE and Singapore. All IT Leaders programmes are accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Management and presented by former CIO’s and senior level directors. Delegates include IT managers from all companies world-wide of every size and industry. Our clients include Accenture, Allen & Overy, Alstom, Amey, Barclays, Boeing, BT, Capita, Debenhams, DHL, HP, HSBC, John Laing, Philips, Rothschild, Royal Bank of Canada and Siemens.

The IT Leaders programme looks at 8 key IT leadership skills, including organizational politics for IT managers, leading IT teams, business and IT strategy, technology innovation, crisis leadership, business change leadership, senior level influencing and corporate leadership.

The IT management and commercial excellence programme topics include IT to business alignment, business relationship management, managing IT teams, technology sourcing, negotiation and finance for IT managers.

The blended and distance learning programmes are available world-wide and are based on the 10 management skills model developed by IT Leaders. Courses are live and interactive, using on-line seminars, e-learning and assignments backed by a comprehensive course guide and mentoring from the course leader.

IT Leaders also runs a vibrant network of IT Managers, available to former delegates and all other IT managers for a small annual subscription. The network group is vendor independent and meets three times at Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire (and on-line), to listen to top leadership and management presenters as well as discussing key topics of interest.

This book is based on the experiences of our delegates and additional interviewees. If you have any comments or management learning that you would like to be considered for future editions, please feel free to email me at david. mckean@itleaders.co.uk

You can also purchase David McKean’s printed book I management: Managing People 1 on Amazon.

1 ) The secret to good IT management

This book is based on the experiences of a large number of successful IT managers. And the truth is, the most important skills are the people skills you will need to be successful. If you are expecting large models and great analysis, you may be a bit disappointed, but bear with us. The skills that will make the biggest difference to your success are the ones we describe here.

The development of IT management skills presents a constant dilemma. Most IT managers are promoted from a technical position which relied on technical skills, and yet, these skills count for very little in the new management job. Many managers respond by ‘keeping their hand in,’ in other words, interfering. They get frustrated because they perceive themselves to be less valuable than before. They feel as if they have been chosen for the swimming team because they were once good at tennis!

In fact, successful IT management boils down to some fundamental, but quite small differences. Understanding these differences has helped me to identify why some IT professionals make it and others don’t. This book gives you this inside track from the experiences of others, revealing the secrets to good IT management together with some tools and techniques to aid you. My aim is to help you maximise your skills in these areas so that you can fulfil your true potential.

Ben’s story

I remember vividly my first job as an IT director. I was working for a large organization in Cape Town, South Africa. I had arrived at my hotel at 2 a.m. after along flight. My management team, seeking to impress me with their enthusiasm, had arranged to meet me at 8 a.m. the following morning.

I looked at them through bloodshot eyes as they asked eagerly “What should we do now, boss?” It was a seminal moment for me. The plain truth was that I had no idea. The people around the table knew a lot more than I did. I found out later, that new managers often have this feeling of being out of their depth, of feeling a bit of a fraud. In truth, no new manager can ever possibly know everything from the outset. Fortunately in my case, I stumbled through by asking a number of smart questions and used the experience of the team to guide me.

In putting together this book, I spent some time asking the fundamental question, “What do people want to know when it comes to IT management?” The first and obvious response is to understand what needs to be done. But having a long list of IT activities doesn’t, on its own, make for good IT management. Yes, an IT organization needs to plan, implement and operate the information systems for an organization to meet its objectives. The real question is “What exactly makes one IT organization excel versus another?”

To answer this, let’s think about the key objectives of IT management, which fall broadly into three categories:

1. Plan the information systems strategy and technology architecture to meet the needs of the business. Good IT strategy needs to take into account the priorities of the business. Good technology architecture needs to take into account new and existing technologies and identify suitable opportunities where they may be able to help the business.
2. Implement IT projects that enable the business to improve the efficiency of the business, reducing costs and delivering competitive advantage. Key success factors are a close co-operation with the business to understand their requirements and set priorities. It also requires good governance, risk management and close working with the business to understand and overcome business change issues.
3. Operate information systems so that they are fast, scalable, reliable and secure. They need to be user friendly and available to those that need them. There needs to be good processes to enable users to log problems and have them quickly resolved.

Although techniques for good planning, implementation and operations are the building blocks of successful IT management, first and foremost, successful IT management is about people, building and running IT teams, managing project sponsors and working closely with users to ensure IT meets their needs.

This book is the first of four in this series on IT management and, for the reasons above, it focuses on the people side of IT management. Other books in the series will cover IT management skills for planning, implementation and operational performance respectively. The outline of the books in the series is shown in table 1 below.

Book 1 – Managing peopleManaging yourself
Managing IT teams
Business relationship management
Working with senior execs

Book 3 -Managing IT projects & leading changeProject & programme management
Managing IT teams
Business relationship management
Project portfolio management

Book 2 – IT strategy and technology innovationBusiness strategy
IT strategy
Technology innovation
IT governance

Book 4- Business management & operational performanceTechnology sourcing & negotiation
Finance for IT managers
Operational excellence
Crisis handling & problem solving

Table 1

It was striking that all the CIO’s interviewed for this book are avid readers. In the footnotes of this book, you will find references to some excellent books that have been a source of inspiration for me.

This book is first and foremost a practical guide based on real experience. Hopefully it will give you some new ideas and inspire you to do things differently and better.

2 ) What makes a successful IT manager?

2.1 Emotional intelligence

Companies have been pre-occupied for years trying to understand the most important leadership skills that deliver the best business results. In the 1990’s Daniel Goleman1 wrote a paper called ‘What makes a leader?’ He worked with many organizations to find out which managers were considered their best leaders. His work was based on the business results of those managers and the opinions of their peers. The research identified 5 key skills, namely, self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill which he collectively called ’emotional intelligence.’

This list has a real resonance with many IT managers. When asked to identify what distinguishes the best bosses they had ever worked for, the answers include good listener, good sense of humour (actually the most common response), trustworthy, knowledgeable and so on – all of these are directly attributable to emotional intelligence.

David’s story

As it happened, shortly after 1 read the paper on Emotional Intelligence, I was given a stark reminder of the importance of self awareness. I was busily working at my desk and looked up to see a queue forming outside my door. There were about 5 of my managers and other team members waiting in line to see me. Thinking that something was up, 1 asked my PA what had caused this sudden rush of interest. She looked a little embarrassed, but eventually revealed that she had sent a note out to the department saying that I was ‘in a good mood’ and that if any of them needed a favour (such as signing expenses), now might be a good time. This certainly made me smile (I really was in a good mood!), but as 1 reflected, it occurred to me that my own impression of myself was not how others saw me. 1 had no idea that 1 had such good days and bad days. My’self awareness’ needed some work.

If you have not read Goleman’s paper, I would urge you to do so. Three of the five characteristics – self awareness, self regulation and motivation – are to do with what we call personal leadership – the ability to manage yourself.

Recognizing one’s strengths and weaknesses (self awareness) is vital. Managers who are self aware know where they are going. They set themselves targets that, although difficult and challenging, are achievable. This track record of achievement in turn gives them a self confidence that rubs off on others. They are usually very honest people, guided by a set of personal principles. If you interview someone with high self awareness, they will be able to tell you what their short-comings are, and also have strategies in place to overcome them.

Self awareness comes from noticing the effect that we have on the things around us. Usually the signs are there if we look for them. Sometimes they need pointing out. If you look back on the best bosses you have ever worked for, you will probably see that they were the ones who told you honestly what you were good at and what you should work on.

A good way to understand strengths and weaknesses is to do a 360° survey. This is where your manager, your peers, your direct reports and end users or customers are asked to comment on your strengths and weaknesses. There are several methods in place. We work with the Hay 360 emotional competency inventory (www.haygroup.com) for example, which is based on Goleman’s emotional intelligence model.

Another assessment which you can easily carry out is called Strengths Finder 2.02. The book by Tom Rath contains a code and a link to do the test on-line. It will identify your top 5 key strengths, which reflects a changing attitude to leadership thinking. In the past, doing things better meant working on weaknesses. If we have significant weaknesses (for example, poor delegation skills), then it is important to work on them. In summary though, we should play to our strengths.

2.2 IT management styles

On our leadership course we ask delegates to complete a psychometric questionnaire that helps them to understand what sort of manager they are in terms of their style of communication. This assessment can be life-changing for some managers. They start to learn that managers behave in completely different ways, even when presented with exactly the same scenario. Every manager has a natural, preferred way of communicating that is a fundamental part of their character. As managers progress in their careers, they become more versatile in adapting to different methods, but fundamentally, their natural preferred style never changes. Think about which one you inherently adhere to. The four styles of communication are:

• Logical and structured – We have now assessed over 1,000 IT managers. Over 60% of IT managers fall, not surprisingly, into this category. These are people who like a lot of factual detail. They like the facts to be presented in a structured and logical order.
• High level thinkers – Studies suggest that approximately 70% of chief executives fall into this category and probably about 20% of IT managers. These people like information at a high level. They are easily bored hate a lot of detail.
• Friendly – Sociable people who live very much in the here and now. 30% of the population but less than 5% of IT managers fall into this group. They tend to be exceptional people managers. They will want to take time to talk informally about all sorts of things before getting down to business.
• Creative types – Creative people think in terms of pictures and images. They are visionaries who see the future clearly. Often eloquent and artistic, they value relationships and can see possibilities for the future. About 15% of IT managers fall into this group.

Figure 1 – Leadership and communication styles

Knowing which is our natural communication style is very important, particularly when working with other styles -which is normally the case. Your position in figure 1 determines how you relate to other managers. If you are not clear on which is your style you could be facing the wrong way, in other words, communicating in the wrong style. We discuss this in more detail in chapter 5.

Self regulation is the other side of self awareness. There is no point knowing what your weaknesses are if you don’t do anything about them. Self regulation is about regulating your emotions and keeping a balanced view of things. It means staying calm when someone comes to tell you that the payroll system has crashed for example, or that a key project needs to be delayed. Managers with good self regulation are able to get to the heart of problems, asking key questions in a composed way.

Where ‘self-regulated’ managers more able to adjust to difficult situations, the reverse is also true. Managers who do not stay calm when presented with bad news will soon discover that no-one tells them what is going on. Self regulation can also be about putting strategies in place to overcome weaknesses. So a manager who is (self) aware that they do not present well when rushed, would always make time to prepare properly. Self regulation is that little voice talking about the different options and suggesting which one might work best in a particular situation.

The third of the personal characteristics of emotional intelligence is motivation. Managers with high motivation are always looking for ways to do things better. They never take no for an answer, although they usually won’t take on the impossible. They like to keep score so they can see positive progress.

Jim’s story – where there’s a will

Jim was head of operations for a large organization in Indonesia. The company’s main data centre was out of date and needed replacing. Jim designed the layout and specified the equipment required. It turned out that all the equipment could be delivered within a few weeks, with the exception of the server racks.

These would take several months, and that assumed no problems with customs. Rather than delay the plan, he drafted up the design with pencil and paper and set off to find a machine shop. After some searching, he found a company that was able to work to his drawings and hand crafted the racks in four weeks. A world class data centre was completed in just three months. Jim showed an extraordinary level of motivation. While others around him were already changing the completion date on the project plan, Jim was looking for a different way.

2.3 Successful CIO behaviours

Organizational hierarchies in today’s world are much flatter than they were say 30 years ago. This has to be applauded, but even within this new egalitarian society, managers are still expected to display different behaviours to their staff. In the table below, you can see a list of what to do and what not to do to get ahead. The list was put together by a leading head hunter based on her experience of working with top CEO’s.

Impressing the CEO at interview

Things to do

1. Convey complex concepts in an interesting and clear way. Senior managers don’t want drawn out descriptions. They want to know what the technology can do for them.
2. Express yourself powerfully, to be able to answer the questions thoughtfully and without too much detail, getting your point across clearly and persuasively.
3. Demonstrate exceptional influencing skills, recognizing that different people are influenced by different things and influenced in different ways
4. Be engaging and interesting with a sense of humour. Show an interest in new things with a thirst for Knowledge
5. Be part of the inner sanctum – In every organization. there is a small group of 5 or 6 top managers who informally make allofthekeydecisionsofthecompany.lt includes the CEO, CFO and 2 or 3 others. Not being aware of such a group is a sure sign that you are not part of this group and not influencing things at the highest level

Things not to do

1. Talk endlessly about technology
2. Be blissfully unaware of one’s shortcomings. When asked about their weaknesses, poor candidates often say something like, well, “”I suppose I sometimes work too hard”” or “”l don’t suffer fools gladly.”” Better to have something a bit more interesting to say, although stay away from admissions of embezzlement!
3. Go for any job – Managers should be discerning about which opportunities to go for and do their homework
4. Dress badly – IT executives should dress like their colleagues in other parts of the business. Ill fitting suits and hair cut with a knife and fork give a bad impression. Interestingly, in a straw poll of HR managers, over 50% of them said they pay attention to a candidate’s shoes.
5. Blame the business – the ‘business couldn’t make up their minds’ or’ we had to educate the users in our new processes.’ Both of these patronizing phrases instantly suggest someone who does not respect or work closely with the user community

Table 2 – Impressing the CIO at Interview

Let us focus on four aspects in particular.

Appearance – Whether you like it or not, first impressions basically come down to appearance – dress, haircut, shoes, accessories and so on. Most people will tell you that their first impressions tend to be accurate. Even if they aren’t, it will be quite a time before they change them. It was interesting that over half the CIO’s we interviewed mentioned the issue of dress without being prompted. All of them were wearing suits and more than half wearing ties.

A senior manager considering someone for a promotion will want them to demonstrate that they can already do the job. They will ask themselves: “Can I see this person in that job, in that chair?” Heavy metal t-shirts and nose piercings, for example, are just not helpful!

Communication – Clear and concise language is vital – no mumbling, rambling, losing the thread or talking too much. Written communication should be clear and polite. One way to test this, by the way, is to look at your email ‘sent items’. You will find the answer there! And what about spelling? A number of top managers I have worked with have terrible spelling, but they always use spell check and have people around them who will quietly make any necessary corrections. I can’t tell you how many CV’s I have received with poor spelling. It shouldn’t make much difference, but it does. Even the way a manager answers the phone is important. It is vital to return calls, get back to people and deliver on commitments. Any single item may not be important, but add them all together and you have your behaviour.

Good conversation – Having good conversation is very important. Being knowledgeable about your company or organization makes you interesting to your peers. Read the business press to find out what is happening in the marketplace, look at your website on a regular basis to keep up to date with new product launches, financial results and so on. And take time to understand new technology trends so you can explain them clearly to others.

Think about the risk – Many managers go about their business completely oblivious to the risks and consequences of what they are doing. We are not talking about taking financial risks. We are talking about career risks. They take on new projects without consideration as to what is needed and whether they have enough control to make things happen.

Let us take the example of top athletes. Contrary to popular belief, they do not take on just any large challenge regardless. They set themselves achievable challenges. When they master those challenges, they look for the next one. They follow a guided path in what is called the Competition Zone or ‘C Zone.’3 They do not stay with one activity so long that it becomes boring – avoiding the ‘drone zone’. Equally, they avoid taking on challenges that are too difficult and lead them into the ‘panic zone’. Over time, as their confidence and skill increases, they are able to take on greater and greater challenges. So they are never out of control and they never take something on without thinking.

2.4 Where successful IT managers spend their time

2.4.1 Busy fools

When I ask managers how many emails they get a day, answers usually range from 30 to over 100. Those at the high end are generally proud of this, and in some cases, email completely defines their job and, to be honest, usually their lives. Often though, these are the very same managers that don’t receive the recognition they deserve. For these managers, it is clear that they need to work smarter and avoid being ‘busy fools.

Ironically, time management is often one of the first management courses that managers attend. Topics include how to stop procrastinating, handle things only once, group items together for when you call someone and so on. In summary, how to get more done in a day. In amongst all these guidelines, there are two golden rules for IT managers that should be emphasized:

• Have the right things on your list – as per the old adage, managers do things right and leaders do the right things
• Do them in priority order, making sure the big tasks are fitted into your calendar first. You can think of your calendar as a fish tank with only so much space. Your large priority tasks are like rocks. You need to put these ‘big rocks’ in your calendar first and then spread the pebbles and sand (i.e. the smaller tasks) around them. This is the best way to get the most out of your available time

2.4.2 Urgent or important?

So the first question is “Which tasks should make it to the priority list?” To do this, we need to categorise our tasks. Every activity has two key characteristics. The first is its urgency, in other words does it need to be done immediately, soon or at some time in the future? The second is importance. In other words is it of high importance, medium or low importance? Plotting these variables on a Boston matrix gives four possible combinations, which are labelled with a quadrant number in figure 1, below. A task can therefore be:

• Quadrant 1 – Urgent and important. This includes the key reporting requirements, regular meetings, resolving immediate technical issues, crisis response and so on
• Quadrant 2 – Important but not urgent. This includes longer term activities, such as IT strategy, crisis planning, problem prevention, team building and personal development
• Quadrant 3 – Urgent but not important. This includes less important meetings, lower priority email and calls
• Quadrant 4 – Neither urgent nor important. This includes filing and administration activities amongst other things

How you categorize a task is entirely down to you. What is important to you may not be to someone else, although hopefully your boss agrees with you.

All managers need to spend time in quadrant 1 (urgent and important) – it is just a question of how much. Although most managers think that they should be spending more time in quadrant one than any other, the research tells us otherwise4. The most effective managers spend more time in quadrant 2 (important, but not yet urgent) compared to their less effective colleagues.

The story of Leo & Michael

Our research has found that there are only small differences between successful and less successful managers. To illustrate this, we put together a DVD 5(available at www.itleaders.co.uk). It tells a story of two IT managers who run similar organizations and have a similar day ahead of them. As we track their progress, we see that Leo (the leader) is well prepared and working in quadrant 2. Michael (the manager) is less prepared, spending a lot of time on detailed technical activities, always under time pressure and much less effective.

The punch line though, is that both managers were played by television actor, David Gillespie. David could transform immediately from one character to another with a change of clothes and a change of what actors call’status,’ the characteristic that defines a person’s confidence or lack of it. Actors are highly skilled at playing with’status,’The point is that many people who see the video do not realize at first that it is the same person. Small changes only are needed to portray a completely different impression.

This tells us that the way to be effective is to address important tasks early, before they become urgent. To take a simple technical example, a task that might be ‘important but not urgent’ today, for example, storage capacity planning, might suddenly translate into an urgent and important task when the disks are full. And what might have required Vi a day to put in place ahead of time, might need a week of several people if neglected.

There is effectively a current of time which is moving from the right to the left on the diagram. So, if you sit on something that is not due until next week, it will drift from being not urgent today on the right hand side of the matrix, to becoming urgent on the left hand side next week. Managers who do not recognize the importance of doing things ahead of time find themselves constantly fire fighting. This increases stress levels and reduces performance. Perhaps you know some managers who fall into this category!

Activities in quadrant 2 are often, but not always, leadership type activities. They are typically larger and usually involve other people – either team members or peers around the organization. They include business and IT strategy, high level governance, problem prevention and your own private goals

‘Quadrant 2’ tasks make the biggest difference to your performance and effectiveness.

Some managers will need to spend more time in ‘quadrant 1’ than others due to the nature of their work. For example, incident desk managers will generally be involved with calls from users who have a problem now, rather than sometime next week. These managers will still need to dedicate time to quadrant 2 activities such as root cause analysis to reduce the number of repeat calls. One organization we worked with found that over 15% of calls to the incident desk were for password resets. Some pre-planning would have easily identified that the password format was too complicated.

Quadrant 3 tasks, the ones that are urgent but not important, often include routine weekly meetings, lower priority emails and so on. ‘Not important’ should really be called ‘less important’ as it is unlikely that an activity is completely unnecessary. Think about how to achieve the same outcome in less time. So for example, a weekly meeting might be very helpful, but if it could be done in 30 minutes rather than an hour, the time spent on a ‘per minute’ basis, would make it twice as important.

Quadrant 4 activities are the ‘neither urgent nor important’ tasks such as the worst of email. Examples might include weekly news bulletins that are full of adverts masquerading as stories, spending too much time smartening up a presentation or creating a long report that no-one reads. Don’t confuse ‘not important’ with ‘boring.’ Team members who doesn’t do their expenses on time, for example, should organize themselves better.

2.5 Changing your time profile

There is nothing more important (or obvious) to achieving career success than changing where time is spent. Here are the 5 steps to improving your time profile?

1. Write down your business and personal objectives – Some of these will come from your personal development plan, others you should add in yourself, particularly around personal development. Use the chart on the next page to list your thoughts
2. Look at your current activities – Work out how much time you spend on each one. Plot them on the urgent vs. important matrix using a relative scale with respect to their objectives. There is no value putting everything in quadrant 1 or quadrant 2. Your ‘less important’ tasks should be in quadrant 3 or 4
3. Retain key activities – Highlight activities that are a key part of your job and need to be retained, for example, the delivery of projects, operational management, budget management and so on.
4. Out with the old – If improving performance means changing what you do, you will need to free up some time before adding anything new. Unless, of course, you are not very busy at the moment! Look through your calendar and email, and put together a list of the ten least important or time consuming things you do. You now have four options as to how to deal with them:

• Delete them – Things that are not important at all should be stopped immediately
• Delegate them – Pass them to someone else, not necessarily someone working for you!
• Do them better – For example, if you have a 2-hour project review meeting, think about how you could complete it in an hour, or half an hour.
• Defer option – In other words, identify activities that aren’t such a priority. Be careful not to defer quadrant 2 activities, though

1. In with the new – Highlight some new areas to emphasise. These will include your own ideas to change your quadrant 1 / quadrant 2 balance, plus some new leadership opportunities. Our research suggests that leadership opportunities for IT managers fall into one of 10 categories as shown in the table below. To help you along, there is a list of leadership opportunities for ‘Leading People’ in the appendix. For the other 3 categories, you will have to read the other books in this series! This list has been compiled over a period of time from IT managers in all industries working around the world.

Collect your thoughts

Use the table below to improve your time profile. Start with your objectives and your important tasks today. Put together a list of things to stop or do less of and add some new ‘quadrant 2’ or leadership opportunities.

2.6 Make your changes count

For an objective to really succeed, it needs some careful thought. It needs a ‘well formed outcome’ a technique which comes from the world of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)6. The idea is to think carefully about the desired outcome of an objective. From this, we can put some steps in place to achieve what we really want. There are 6 stages that need to be followed.

1. State the desired outcome in the positive way. For example, let us suppose that we are smokers and we want to give up. Just saying that we want to give up is not sufficient. We need to get to the heart of why we want to give up. The outcome needs to be restated in positive terms, for example, ‘We want to get fit because we want to climb Mt Kilimanjaro next year.”
2. Next, think if this is going to be a win win for everyone around. So, to take our quit smoking example, there is no point going off to the gym every night for training and leaving our partners at home with the children. So we need to say something, like, “We are going to get fit enough to climb Mt Kilimanjaro by going swimming every Tuesday and running early on a Saturday.
3. The third part of the well formed outcome is that it needs to fit with who we are. There is no point going swimming every Tuesday if we can’t swim, or running early on a Saturday if we don’t like getting up early.
4. Next think about the steps on the way to your goal. Going swimming once a week and running once a week is a good start. But will it get us fit enough? So the fitness activity at the beginning is an important first step, but we need the other steps too.
5. A well formed outcome also needs to be self maintained. To take a trivial example, if we are reliant on someone driving us to the swimming pool on a Tuesday and they are not always available, it won’t be long before we are out of the routine and any benefit is lost.
6. And finally, our well formed outcome needs to be something we are willing to pay the price for. Yes, it would be great to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, but if we really don’t want to give up smoking, go swimming, give up our quiet evening in or pay for an expensive trip, then we need to think of a different outcome.

The process encourages you to think about the desired outcome. And by working through how to get there, it makes it much more likely to be achieved. Think about how you could apply the ‘well formed outcome’ thinking to your key business and personal objectives.

3 ) Team Leadership

In this chapter, we discuss what makes a good IT team. The objective is to help you think about how you currently run your team and offer some new ideas. As an IT manager you will probably recognize that leading technology teams requires particular skill and expertise. Technology teams have their own characteristics. For example, most IT team members are highly trained, often with a technical degree. But strongly developed, highly logical minds can also create their own problems! IT employees often believe that technical knowledge is extremely important, and also a very good measure of ability. And they can sometimes be surprised how highly companies value employees who have limited technical understanding.

IT people are often self-sufficient which can reduce the communication between team members. They also love solving problems and are often on the lookout for problems to solve. Unfortunately this can appear very negative to outsiders. Observations of IT staff also suggest that they can find it difficult to work in a hierarchical organization and to take instructions, particularly if their managers are not technical. Team managers therefore need to be more inclusive in their approach, think carefully about how work is allocated and recognize the importance of good technical skills.

In summary, there are some real differences in the makeup of technology teams compared to other parts of the business. In the next 9 sections, we discuss our top guidelines for managing IT teams.

3.1 Recruit good people

The team you inherit won’t be perfect. All the more reason to make the most of any opportunity that presents itself to improve your team. Take these opportunities wisely and follow our guidelines.

• If possible, ask for the right to hire one or two people into your team when you take the job. Ideally, you should be looking to bring in people who you have worked with in the past.
• If you do need to hire from outside and you do not have a candidate readily available, choose a good recruitment firm or head hunter. Work with them to choose the best candidates. Pay attention to the style, layout and ordering of the CV It tells you a lot about the candidate, how they view themselves and their achievements. Look at more rather than fewer CV’s. It will take you one minute to scan a CV if you know what you are looking for – and if you don’t…? Recruitment opportunities are too important to waste.
• Be clear what you are asking for, but don’t be too specific. The skills you need today may well change in a few weeks. You may regret it if you choose a specialist who can’t adapt. Good people will be versatile.
• Always conduct your interviews with a colleague, ideally, your HR manager. It will serve you well in terms of speeding things up, getting a second opinion on candidates and keeping you tuned in to a group that generally knows everything that is going on. HR will understand the procedural side as well as the legal aspects such as age, sex and racial discrimination laws. And they will probably have a better understanding of market pay rates. In short, they will help you find better people, quicker.
• Think about which competencies are required for the role. ‘Competency interviews’ are used quite frequently these days. Here every interview is conducted in the same way with the same questions to test for the specific competencies required for the job. When you are recruiting technical people, make sure their technical knowledge is thoroughly tested i.e. don’t take their word that they are competent, just because they did it in their last job. All the major blue chip companies that I work with ask candidates to do a written test whenever technical knowledge is required. Remember that competence is not the same as personality, so make sure you test for this too. Research shows that gut feel can also be a valuable tool7 is choosing the right candidate. One IT director we work with asks one of his team to take out any potential candidate for lunch. It tells him a lot about how they would fit it.
• Prepare properly for interviewing candidates. There is nothing more certain to put off a qualified candidate than an interviewer who doesn’t know their name or hasn’t read their CV. Less qualified candidates will not be put off, so lack of preparation is the best way of ensuring that you get lower level candidates.
• Put the candidate at ease – you are recruiting them to do a job in the IT department, not to be good in pressure interviews. Ask them what they know about your company and listen carefully to their answer. Of course, knowing about your company isn’t the same as being able to do the job, but at least you will know if they want it. There is no greater mistake than recruiting someone who can do the job, but doesn’t want to.
• As the interviewer, take care not to talk too much in the interview. Studies show that interviewers rate candidates higher in proportion to how much they (the interviewer, not the interviewee) tall, so take care not to be misled by someone who managed to keep you talking, but is not suitable!
• It can take time to find the right people. Don’t be tempted to give in to deadlines. If you are in doubt, keep looking. It is important it is to get the right people on board. It would be a terrible shame if to fill a rare vacancy with the wrong person

3.2 IT organization

3.2.1 Organizational structures

Good organization for the overall IT department is vital. Many options and permutations exist and include the following, or indeed a combination of the following:

• Life-cycle – e.g. strategy & planning, projects, application support, infrastructure
• Process – e.g. sales process, manufacturing process
• Departmental – e.g. sales department, distribution
• Location – e.g. Europe, Asia, North America
• Application – e.g. ERP, CRM

The ideal structure depends on the topology of the company, but a structure with a department each for planning, projects and infrastructure, plus application support mirroring the business units is usually a good starting point. Set up your reporting lines carefully. Typically a manager will have between 5 and 9 reports. Recognize that there is no perfect solution and that the most difficult problems need to be with your best managers.

Think about the information flows between your team members. Each cross-flow is a potential opportunity when they will need to come to you for resolution. If possible, put people with the same skills in the same area to help with resource allocation. Keep the project list manageable to keep the department working effectively. Give consideration to how the organization appears to the rest of the business. Points of contact should be clear, and if your business relationship managers promise something to the business users, they should have the authority to deliver it.

3.2.2 Clear roles and responsibilities

A key part of organizational management is the development of the right skills, deploying them to best effect. The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA)8 provides a clear universally recognized model for describing IT practitioner’s skills. They are defined in two axes:

• Categories – which are further broken down into sub-categories to group standard IT job roles
• Levels – define the different levels of competence or attainment

SFIA does not define the categories or subcategories. It only defines the skills. The categories and sub-categories are merely a way of organising the skills on paper. So the cats and subcategories might change according to your organization. Clearly, there are also behavioural skills (that some people refer to as “soft skills” SFIA deals with what we refer to as professional skills.

It look as though you are making a reference [1] to a bibliography or footnote. It would help if there you would say that

SFIA categories

Strategy & architecture

Business change

Solution development & implementation

Service management

Procurement & management support

Client interface

SFIA levels

7. Set strategy/ inspire, mobilize

6 Initiate/influence

5 Ensure/advise

4. Enable

3. Apply

2. Assist

1. Follow

The resulting matrix of these two axes shows the complete set of skills used by IT practitioners. SFIA provides and overall description for each skill, supported by a description of how the skill appears at each level of competency at which it is recognized. A skill does not normally appear at all 7 levels.

3.3 Create harmony

Top teams work together in a particular and distinct way and normally have a set of team ‘values’ to guide them. Value statements reflect the actual beliefs of an organization and must be backed up with actions so there is clear evidence that they are supported. They guide behaviour and in effect define culture. For a team to work in harmony, this code is vital. There are 5 characteristics of particular importance for successful teams.

Mutual respect: How people in the company interact with each other and the respect they show for everyone at all levels. In France, the tradition of shaking hands with your working colleagues each morning is a great example that reinforces communication and demonstrates mutual respect. The military have long had a tradition of getting together briefly at 11 a.m. every morning for coffee. These rituals emphasise the core beliefs of mutual respect.

Companies without harmony – where people can’t say what they think

In his book, ‘How NASA builds teams,’9 Charlie Pellerin tells the story of the Hubble telescope. At the time, he was NASA’s director of astrophysics. Although the launch was successful, it soon became apparent that there was a serious flaw in the mirror. Sometime later, the failure review board told Congress that the flawed mirror was down to a leadership problem. It transpired that the contractors had not forwarded the results of numerous tests which might have identified the failings. When asked why not, they reported that they were tired of the beatings. NASA had become so hostile to its contractors that they stopped reporting any technical problems.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers’10 tells the story of Korean Air whose planes in the early 1990’swere crashing at a rate 17 times that of the industry average. In a typical accident, there are seven consecutive human errors. These are rarely errors of technical or flying know-how, but errors of teamwork and communication. Investigators found that the captain’s social status was so high that the junior officers could only communicate obliquely and deferentially. In one case, the captain was trying to land the plane in severe weather conditions. He had committed to a visual approach and the navigator knew there was worse weather ahead. Rather than state clearly that they were heading for a highly dangerous situation with no backup plan, he says’ the radar can help us a lot.’ The captain was tired and not listening to the hidden meaning. 10 minutes later the plane had crashed.

Honesty and trust. Lencioni11 in his work on dysfunctional teams emphasised the importance of trust in a team and showed how teams without trust get sucked into a downward spiral of mistrust and poor performance. One of the greatest forces in creating distrust is where the organization in competition with itself, with similar functions divided across departments. The good news, though, is that if you spot such a problem early, re-organizing fragmented functions often transforms team working very quickly. IT managers need to build the positive circle of trust. Trust breeds co-operation which in turn breeds commitment, accountability and attention to results. This increases trust and so the spiral of trust becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Pride in a sense of belonging: This is shown in how a company works together and the emphasis it places on team-working, for example, the importance of keeping commitments and supporting other team members. Many organizations foster the sense of belonging through their values and often a dress code. For example, some companies have a special company uniform whereas others are more relaxed with a ‘Casual Friday.’ These codes represent the culture of a company and so, what works for one company does not work for another.

Commitment and loyalty: Any successful company needs to foster a pride in hard work to remain successful, and at the heart of this is the commitment to the customer. Leading customer quality is the job of everyone, not just those in direct contact with the customer. Objectives need to be set that make sure everyone shares in the commitment to customer quality and business success.

Attitude to risk taking. An organization needs to know where is stands in terms of innovation and risk. Is it conservative, or does it like to be at the forefront of innovation? It is all very well for a company to say they encourage risk-taking and innovation. The test comes when something goes wrong – does the management team stay supportive?

International teams – Diplomatic relations

In today’s IT world, more and more teams are international in nature. Understanding the different outlooks of different countries is an increasingly vital skill for IT managers. In collaboration with a number of international ClO’s, we have put together this list of 6 guidelines for working across international and cultural boundaries.

1. Be easy to understand – For those of you who are native or fluent English speakers, you are fortunate that this is international language of business. But just because it is second nature for you, be patient with those who are not natural English speakers. It is important that you speak clearly which generally also means slowly. Use short sentences and simple grammatical structures, avoiding long words and slang expressions.
2. Write down important instructions – One technique that worked well for the CIO of large technology company was to write detailed emails to with instructions and guidance for key activities at critical times. Email allows words to be fined tuned, making the meaning clear and unambiguous. Colleagues can also refer back to it.
3. Really take time to listen -1 mean really listen. It may mean long pauses in the conversation while colleagues are trying to find the right words to express themselves. You should never attempt to finish someone’s sentences. Pay attention to make sure you are not interrupting.
4. Recognize that your way isn’t necessarily right -and certainly isn’t the only way. Different countries approach problems in different ways. Just because something worked for you in your country, doesn’t mean it will work in another. Never underestimate the resourcefulness, intelligence and expertise of the people you are working with. Seek to find the ‘middle way,’ in other words, take time to think of ideas that capture the best of everything from both sides- methods, experience and cultures. Indonesian has an expression ‘gatong rayong’ which literally means’ carrying together’ and reflects the importance of colleagues working together on plans that all have signed up to
5. Be sensitive to culture and social context – One of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of working in an international environment is the opportunity to learn about other cultures. Be sensitive to the fact that different cultures value different things. For example, so called ‘high context’ cultures such as China, Korea and so on place a very high value on experience and seniority. Showing respect is essential in these environments. Always seek to learn about the way things are done and the culture. Be sensitive to everything and everyone around you and adjust your behaviour accordingly.
6. Not all good news is good news – Be aware that you may appear threatening to other cultures for any number of reasons. Show humility and encourage your colleagues to come forward with problems without fear of criticism or reprimand. Many cultures do not like to give bad news and can, shall we say, distort the real truth. A soft approach, demonstrating trustworthiness is essential.

3.4 Creating a balance of skills

It is important to get good people with the right skills, but this alone will not guarantee success. We also need to try and ensure that our team has the right balance of skills so it can portray the right behaviours. To use the analogy of football or hockey, you would not want a team where everyone wants to be scoring goals – you need everyone to work closely together and dividing up all of the work that needs to be done. Dr Meredith Belbin12 has conducted extensive research on the subject of teams and developed a simple and practical model.

His research identified that that every successful team needs skills in 9 areas and that someone should fill each of these 9 roles or functions or problems will occur. Since many teams have less than 9 members, team members will often fulfil more than one role. Unlike a psychometric profile for example, it is relatively easy to take on a different role if circumstances require. To assess your team roles, go to the Belbin website www.belbin.com. For a relatively small cost you can complete the online survey, either for yourself or better still, for your whole team. Details can be found on the Belbin website, www.belbin.com where there is also some free resource material to accompany any related Team Role test.

There are 9 Belbin roles

PLANT: Creative, imaginative, unorthodox. Solves difficult problems

RESOURCE INVESTIGATOR: Extravert, enthusiastic, communicative. Explores opportunities. Develops contacts

CO-ORDINATOR: Mature, confident and trusting. A good chairperson. Clarifies goals, promotes decision making.

SHAPER: Dynamic, outgoing, highly strung. Challenges, pressurises and finds ways around obstacles, reviews the progress of the project and give energy/re-direction as necessary!

MONITOR EVALUATOR: Sober, strategic and discerning. Sees all options and have a reputation for making accurate judgements

TEAM WORKERS: are sociable, perceptive and accommodating. They listen to what is going on and can sense when things are not right. They are good diplomats and can avert difficult situations

IMPLEMENTER: is someone who is disciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient. They turn ideas into practical action.

COMPLETER-FINISHER: is painstaking, conscientious and often anxious. They search out errors and omissions and make sure the project delivers to a good level of quality

SPECIALIST: Single-minded, self-starting, dedicated. Provides knowledge or technical skills that are in rare supply

Team members generally fulfil their roles all the time, but some really come into their own at particular stages of a project. At the outset, a project needs the ideas person, known as the plant in Belbin terms. Of course, not all ideas are good ideas, and the MONITOR EVALUATOR is needed to select the best ones. Once the project is under way, you need a project manager, usually fulfilled by the CO-ORDINATOR, and someone to find the resources – the RESOURCE INVESTIGATOR. Next, the work of the IMPLEMENTER and TEAM WORKER begins and the project makes progress. From time to time it will be necessary for the SHAPER to look at things from a high level and re-direct the project if required. As the project nears completion, the skills of the COMPLETER FINISHER come into play to ensure that the product is delivered to a high standard of quality.

It is important to have expertise in different roles – celebrate diversity in your team. Teams with lots of IMPLEMENTERS implement lots of projects, but not necessarily the right ones. We often find lots of IMPLEMENTERS and quite a few SHAPERS amongst IT managers, but, it has to be said, not many PLANTS.

3.5 Set direction and objectives

Good direction and clear objectives have a massive positive effect on the success of any team! Estimates suggest that performance can be increased by 20% with good, well thought through targets. The management books talk about vision as being an essential ingredient, and so it is. But vision also needs some reality, particularly for IT people. IT strategy should describe both your vision and the targets you are seeking to achieve.

As described by Kaplan & Norton13 in their book “The Balanced Scorecard,’ objectives should be set in each of the four quadrants of the balanced scorecard, namely, customer or end user objectives (in the case of IT), process objectives including technical performance (again in IT’s case), people objectives and financial objectives.

From the IT objectives, define objectives for every IT team member. Objectives should be properly defined using the SMART acronym as follows:

• Specific – clearly defined and unambiguous
• Measurable – in terms of time, cost, quantity and / or quality
• Achievable – in other words, agreed and understood by the team member
• Realistic – so the necessary resources available, enough time has been allocated and are there no conflicting tasks
• Timely – a clear timescale is agreed

All objectives should have a line of sight, where there is a clear link from the top level goals of the CEO through the departmental objectives of IT to the individual objectives of every team member. The following three questions will help assess if a team has good direction:

1. Does the team know what to do?
2. Does the team know when to do it?
3. Does the team know what order to do it in?

Objectives should have both a baseline which is the minimum level to be achieved and a stretch target. Stretch targets can be an enormous source of motivation, allowing team members to prove that they can do more than just the job description.

3.6 Create good working conditions

The more we’ve worked with IT teams, the more we’ve come to realize the importance of a good office environment. No two companies are the same and what works for one may not work for another. Yet too few IT departments think carefully about what is required or what could be improved. Office s