Leadership

I asked the following question on LinkedIn earlier this week and received some very insightful responses:

What are the top challenges in IT organization’s today?

In reading the various magazines, blogs and websites out there (CIO.com, etc) on the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many many issues facing IT groups today. What are the top challenges that most IT organizations are facing today? What is keeping CIO’s up at night in today’s environment?

If you haven’t tried out LinkedIn yet, you should…there are some great folks over there as well as some excellent information available in the Questions / Answers Section.

I received some excellent responses…and most were on target with my own thoughts.  Prior to asking the question, I thought that the issues that were in the front of many IT leaders were:

• Find and Keeping Talent
• Business / IT Alignment
• IT Strategy
• Outsourcing

The responses received from other LinkedIn users seem to back up my original thoughts.  There were other issues listed (System integration, Merger and Acquisition Due Diligence, etc) that were very interesting to see as well.

It’s interesting to get the feedback from people in the field on what they see as huge issues.  An interesting point to note, none of the responses seemed to be from CIO’s of an organization…all were from people who seem to be at a more tactical level than strategic level.

Why is this important?  To me, it says that there are a lot of people in IT with the business savvy to see the challenges that is facing them and their organization.  Why then are these same IT folks being told that they aren’t “business savvy” and need to start speaking “like business people“?  It sounds to me like there are plenty of business savvy people in IT but very few people on the ‘business’ side of things that have really reached out to these folks to get their opinions.

Any additional challenges for IT groups that have been overlooked (either in my post or in the responses on LinkedIn)?

In a recent posts, I’ve mentioned employee engagement (more on the topic here, here and here)…I’ve had a few emails from readers asking me to give some examples of how they could go about engaging the people on their teams.  There are no ‘right’ answers for this because every person is different, but as a general rule, the following factors would help:

1. Trust your team.
2. Make sure your team knows that failure IS an option.
3. Make your team members accountable for their actions

Let’s look at each of these factors in more detail.  Before you continue, please realize I am not an organizational design expert nor human resources expert…these are just some basic techniques that I’ve used in the past.

Trust your team

Trust your employees.  If you trust them to do their jobs, they’ll deliver.

Treat your team like the adults they are.  Stop using the employment model from the Industrial Revolution and let your team decide when and where they should work.  Look into Results Focused systems (such as Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE), etc).

Make sure your team knows that failure IS an option

Failure will happen.  If you ensure that your team knows that it is OK to fail, and that you expect them (and yourself) to fail, you’ll be amazed at what they’ll be able to accomplish.  I touched on this subject in a previous blog post titled “Learning From Failure“…an excerpt from that post is:

According to a story recounted in a newsletter from the New & Improved website, Warren Buffett, the semi-celebrity CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, says that the act of making a mistake (and failing) is essential to the decision making process.  As an example of this, Mr Buffett once told David Sokol, the CEO of a Berkshire Hathaway controlled company, that:

David, we all make mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes, you can’t make decisions.

This comment was after Mr. Sokol told Buffett that they would have to write off $360 million for the year due to a project that didn’t work out as expected.

If you truly want to engage your employees, making them understand that failure IS an option is key.  If they know that they have the right to fail, they’ll put their heart and soul into their efforts.

Hold your team members accountable for their actions

At first, this may seem a bit out of place, but I promise you, it will help.  Think back to a time when one of your team-mates / employees / friends / etc weren’t pulling their weight on a task.  What was your reaction to finding out that they were able to ‘get by’ without doing as much work as you?  If you are like most people, you were a bit disappointed in the person responsible for managing  / leading that task.

It’s very difficult for any person to maintain a positive attitude and love what they do if they feel like there are people who aren’t pulling their weight.  If you ensure that all your team members are held accountable for results, and that they must hold you accountable for results, then you’ll have a much happier team.

Conclusion

The three factors listed above will not immediately turn a dis-engaged employee into a happy and engaged one, but they will help you down the road of build a steady foundation for your team.  By trusting your team, holding them accountable and communicating that failure IS an option, you’ll have a team of people who are willing to dig deeper and do a bit more for you and the organization.

Carmine Coyote had a great post over on Slow Leadership today titled “The More Meetings, The Less Trust“. The introductory paragraph sums it up nicely (emphasis mine):

In the list of activities that waste time and cause worthless frustration at work, meetings rank very near the top. Not only do many meetings fail to result in any clear decision, leaving you wondering why people came together in the first place, others have no discernible purpose at all. Worst of all, holding too many meetings passes a strong message: the boss doesn’t trust the team to function without his or her constant interference; and colleagues don’t trust one another not to undermine them in some way.

How many of you have experienced this in your career?  How many have experienced this within the last week?  I know I have.

I actually got to see the ultimate no-trust meeting request…a meeting to prepare for a meeting.    If your boss wants to prepare for the meeting with his boss with a pre-meeting, you know you are in trouble.

There are very few times that having a meeting to prepare for a meeting makes sense.  If you’re preparing to present a solution to a client or something similar…you should be prepared and a meeting might be called for.  But…if you are calling a meeting of your staff to have them tell you what they will tell your boss in the upcoming meeting, something is very very wrong.

Why does this occur?  Why would a seemingly intelligent individual have to gather their staff together for a ‘pre-meeting’?  Well…I think it has to do with trust.  If you trust your staff, why would you call them in to debrief you on what they will discuss in the ‘official’ meeting?   You might as well as just scream “I don’t trust you” to your entire staff.

Even worse than just having a pre-meeting is having a pre-meeting and forcing people to change their commentary/report to match what the ‘boss’ wants to hear.  I recently saw this occur and was amazed that everyone went along so readily.  It seems that the ‘boss’ only wants to hear what he expects to hear so that’s what everyone tells him.

This type of attitude does nothing for morale.  It destroys what little faith employee’s have left in the organization and in their manager.

So how do we get out of death by meeting?

Simple…trust your employees to do their job.  Give them the freedom to get things done.  Make sure they know that you are available to help at any time but that you expect them to make the decisions that they need to make to do their job.  Make them feel trusted.

Carmine Coyote has this to say about bring trust back into the workplace:

What does it feel like to be trusted? You’re allowed to make decisions without constantly checking with others; to get on with your job and use your commonsense about whom you need to speak with to ensure success. You’re expected to ask for help when you need it, and not otherwise; and not to call others together until you have something really important to say. Add these up and you have a water-tight case for removing upwards of 75% of the meetings that disfigure people’s calendars. Think how much time and money that would save.

Yes..think how much time, money, energy you could save by just letting your people do their jobs.

One thing that I’ve heard often is that a project manager role is a good thing for your career and will help your ascent up the ladder to more responsibility.

I’m wondering how often this actually occurs.  I’ve met a lot of Project Managers who have been PM’s for years and have had very little chance to be promoted.  Now, some of these people are perfectly happy being PM’s and don’t want to do anything else…but others are struggling with moving into higher responsibility positions.

I’ve got a good friend who’s looking to make the transition into a leadership role (she’s hoping for a Director or VP spot) and she asked for my thoughts on what she needs to do to make herself more appealing for a more senior role.

I couldn’t really answer the question…surprising I know! :)  She’s a great PM but an even better leader.  She understands business and technology and is a perfect candidate for a a senior leadership role but she’s found that companies are passing her over for advancement.  I took a look at her resume…everything looked great.    She’s personable and interviews well.  She has peer reviews and recommendations from current and previous managers…everything is the way it should…except she can’t land a job in a more senior role.

I’ve mentioned to her that she might want to start looking elsewhere because it seems as if her managers don’t want to promote her because she is skilled at what she does and they don’t want to lose a good PM.  I’ve seen this happen other places…people aren’t given a chance to move into a management role because they are ‘too good at what they do’.   Of course, that’s absolutely the wrong thing to say and do…if you have good people and they have the right skill sets to be a manager, you should move them into that role.

Does anyone have any ideas for those PM’s who can’t seem to get promoted?

Short post today…but powerful (at least I think so). Great post over at Carpe Factum today titled “Are You Botox-ing Your Organization?“.

Not much I can add to what Timothy has already said other than to ask you the following question:

Do you allow your employees/teams to fail?  Do they know they have the right to fail?  If not, you aren’t really allowing innovation and change and you are “Botox-ing your organization”.

Interesting analysis today over on Jeffrey Phillips’ Thinking Faster Blog in an article titled “Productivity Barriers“.

In the article, Phillips discusses a recent newsletter from IFS (an ERP software vendor) that discussed the issues of usability of ERP systems. In the newsletter, IFS relates survey results that tried to, in Phillips’ words, understand:

…how much of a barrier the enterprise software most of us use everyday presents to becoming more productive

The research that IFS presented is quite interesting (click here to read the results on CIO.com). In addition to looking at usability, the research looked at productivity and asked questions around what factors caused a loss in productivity in the organization. The results aren’t surprising…results included things like (not in any order):

• too many emails
• too much work
• lack of clear priorities
• poor IT optimization
• too many meetings

The survey respondents were than asked to supply factors that effected their own productivity and, again, the results aren’t really that surprising…results included things such as unclear objectives, not enough resources, too many meetings, etc etc.

What I found most interesting was Phillips’ take on the root causes of the above issue. He writes:

Unclear objectives/priorities - poor management strategic direction and communication

Too many meetings - poor management skills and time management

Too much work/Lack of resources - downsizing and “doing more with less”

IT not optimized/doesn’t work the way the company works - inflexible technology supporting a business that is required to be flexible and change

So, in my simple analysis, many of the issues related to productivity have to do with clear management direction and communication, and the ability to communicate what’s important. Additionally, in today’s market, flexibility and adaptability are just as important as established processes and operational excellence, but our technology, systems and processes aren’t designed that way.

Jeffrey Phillips’ hits it on the head.

Most problems with productivity today can be traced to a few factors (at least in my experience). These are:

1. Poor Alignment of Information Technology and/or IT Process to the Business goals - If your organization needs to be flexible, don’t put in an inflexible IT system and/or IT process.
2. Reliance on formal IT process - Process is good. Process is necessary. Create process to allow for flexibility, speed and change. Most processes today in the IT world do not follow this mantra. They are created and then their creators expect people to follow them closely with no deviation and no room for change.
3. Poor Communication - Managers need to understand that in order to get the most of their teams, they need to clearly outline the responsibilities and expectations of the people in their teams. Without this clear communications, people will spend time trying to determine what they should be doing and/or who should be doing it.
4. Poor Leadership - with good leadership, an organization can overcome many things. Excellent leaders will overcome poor process (by changing the process), poor alignment (by aligning IT and business), and poor communication (by ensuring communication improves).

Phillips’ analysis of the results of the IFS study were right on the mark….or at least they match up with my own thougths

Mike Schaffner posted an interesting article titled “Hiring the Right / Wrong IT People to Achieve Alignment” in which he pointed at a recent article by Dr. George E. Strouse titled “Are You Hiring the Wrong IT Staff to Achieve Your Alignment Goals?” that appeared on CIO.com. Check both articles out.

An excerpt from Dr. Strouse’s article sum’s the topic up nicely:

The real problem underlying the IT business alignment conundrum is that we’re not hiring the right people in IT. The right people need strong backgrounds in both business and technology. Most IT hiring managers place too much emphasis on strong technology backgrounds.

As regular readers may know, I’ve written about this topic a few times (see here, here and here for a few samples).

I’ve spent a good portion of my career working with organization’s trying to align their business strategy with their technology. I’ve found is that the difference between success and failure in this activity is found within the people that the organization has hired.

The majority of these organizations who were successful had employees within the IT organization that could ’speak’ to the business side of the company. The IT group wasn’t strictly technologists…they were technologists with business backgrounds. Those organizations that struggled with aligning their technology with their business goals were the ones that placed an emphasis on technology knowledge over business knowledge.

Mike Schaffner relates an interesting antecdote on this topic:

I once had a CEO tell me that one of the things she wanted in IT was people that “talk like us” meaning they understand business issues and can explain things in business terms rather than just business terms.

I’ve had similar conversations with CxO’s as well. They are tired of hearing acronyms and technology buzzwords…many just want to understand how technology can help the business achieve it’s goals.

Interesting things to think about…as are the Related Articles below. Enjoy!

Employee engagement has been seen as a ‘buzzword’ for some time but also been touted as something that every organization should focus on. It appears that there is some progress toward engaging employees (see the “Further Reading” below) but of course, many organization’s just don’t “get it”.

Instead of talking about how to engage employees (like I’ve done here and here), I wanted to take a second to address one simple little topic that any organization and/or person can implement that will help with employee engagement…or more importantly, help not to disengage employees.

What is the tiny & simple thing that you can avoid doing?

Don’t make your employees feel like under-appreciated (or worse unappreciated) drones.

Example

You bust your hump working overtime to bring a project in on time. You put in 50 to 60 hours and your team does the same. Each team member has demonstrated their abilities to get the job done many times over and morale is quite high.

After the project is complete and you’ve got some down-time, you have an opportunity to attend a seminar. The seminar is free and is directly related to your job and is being held at a local restaurant over lunch. You sign up for the seminar (hey…its free food an an interesting topic right?) and tell your boss that you plan on attending the seminar and then going home and plan to work from there the rest of the afternoon. Your bosses’ response:

Sure…go ahead..sounds interesting. But…I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you working from home…you’ll need to take a half-day off to do this.

Talk about pulling the wind of your sails….perfect way to disengage an employee.

Remember…if you want to get your employees more engaged, make sure they know they are appreciated. Pay attention to the small things…take an afternoon and go bowling with the team. Buy them a pizza occasionally. It’s usually these small things that will benefit you the most….and hurt the most if you don’t attend to them.

Further Reading:

• Employee engagement: What exactly is it?
• 12 Questions to Measure Employee Engagement
• The ten C’s of employee engagement
• Engage Me If You Can-It’s as Easy as A,B,C

When did common sense get removed from the corporate technology selection process?

For those that don’t know what it is, technology selection is the process by which an organization decides which technology platform (software, hardware, etc) will be used for a particular application and/or piece of the business. For example, selecting an organization’s Content Management platform (e.g., Sitecore, Interwoven, Vignette, etc).

Using a common sense approach toward selecting technology seems reasonable. To take this approach, a person doesn’t need to be an expert…just someone that can think through things and apply common sense to the selection process.

How would one approach selecting technology without using common sense? Glad you asked…and I guarantee you that you’ve seen this before.

1. Hear about the ‘latest technology’ and/or hear a buzzword.
2. Think “yes…we need that….that will make everything better!”
3. Talk to a few vendors.
4. See a demo.
5. Buy the platform
6. Throw it over the wall to the technology group to implement.
7. Go look for your next buzzword.

This approach happens more often than you would think. There are so many things wrong with this approach. Common sense has been thrown out the window.

I’ve personally seen this approach taken in many organizations when the leadership team decides that ‘X Technology’ is going to be their savior (note to people…technology will rarely save you) and they ignore the “common sense voice” in their head. Very rarely do these types of approaches work.

To compare, let’s look at the approach that I follow when assisting organizations in selecting a new platform…it isn’t necessarily the ‘right’ way…but it has worked for me…and I think it’s an extremely simple and common sense approach:

1. Take a look at the organization’s strategy for the future
2. Look at the technology strategic plan (if one exists)
3. Build a business case (if not already created)
4. Ensure that the organization’s strategy is aligned with the technology strategy (many times it doesn’t)
5. Work closely with the information technology/systems group to understand their current capabilities
6. Find an answer to the question of “What are you trying to accomplish with this technology?”
7. Perform some risk analysis (e.g., affect of the new technology on current processes, etc.)
8. Take a vendor agnostic stance
9. Look at all available options (including current systems) to find the ideal solution.
10. Develop a comparison of solutions with strategic direction
11. Choose a platform
12. etc.

I could keep going…but you get the point. Common sense stuff, right? Basically, you look at where you are trying to go and choose the technology that will help you get there. How hard is that? Apparently….very difficult for most organizations.

How can we get common sense back into the technology selection process? If you have some ideas…I’d love to hear them.

This post is a follow up to my post titled “Employee Onboarding“.

Research reported on a recent Management Issues article titled “How to lose half your hires within a year” provides a bit more insight into the Employee Onboarding problem in the US. They report (bolded text is my emphasis):

A study by consultancy Novations has found a third of employers report that a quarter of their new hires leave within the first year, while more than a fifth carelessly lose nearly half of their recruits within the same timeframe.

The research, reported by SHRM Online, the website for the Society for Human Resource Management, found fewer than half of employers have a structured programme to help new recruits settle in, or “onboarding” as it is called.

Under a third of employers train their hiring managers in onboarding techniqures, with 15 per cent even leaving it up to their hiring managers to sort out all the paperwork.

Similarly, fewer than half give candidates a realistic job preview or provide interviewers with tools to help them evaluate a candidate’s skills.

While six out of 10 do follow a structured selection process, just 46 per cent establish objective hiring criteria for all open positions.

Can you imagine?

How much money is wasted every year by organizations by selecting employees and then just ‘throwing them to the sharks’.

You can read the SHRM article on this research at “Many Employers Admit They ‘Wing’ Support of New Hires“. Some other interesting stats from the research report are:

• 57 percent of all those surveyed have never had a performance review, or, if they did have a review, they found it neutral or not useful.
• 79 percent don’t receive career mentoring.
• Only 12 percent said their employer offers them a career path plan.

Other articles you may find interesting:

• The Hiring Challenges
• Blaine Collins on New Team Members
• Organizational Culture
• Follow-up to Organizational Culture

Technorati Tags: Organizaitons, Hiring Challenges, Employee Onboarding, Onboarding, Culture