Slashdot Mirror
Making IT Visible to Management?
frustrated Dilbert asks: "We are a very small IT dept where the manager participates in the day-to-day operation of IT services. The problem is that he almost never talks to upper management and doesn't get involved in the business side until someone gives him a specific project to handle. The result is that IT is considered to be firefighters when things fail, and generally plumbers that fix stuff when other PHBs create new projects. We run all the mission-critical stuff in a line of business that can not work without technology. The IT PHB fails to see which sides of the business we need to support and which are second in line. I end up doing my stuff and a lot of his duties of picking up the direction of the business and making strategic decisions. The company is actually great to work for, but I was not hired (or paid) for teaching my boss to run his shop in addition to tech stuff. He simply wasn't made for it and got promoted into something he can't cope with. I'm getting really tired of having to do management and not get any credit and would love to have him replaced, but I hate having to rat on him too. How can I get a more organized workplace when my boss isn't capable of thinking ahead?"
...doing his job, and let him get himself fired. Problem solved.
but I was not hired (or paid) for teaching my boss to run his shop in addition to tech stuff
We all have to do things that we didn't expect in our jobs. If that's all you have to do, then go home and spend hours being thankful you're not digging ditches or working for bosses that constantly insult you or that you have a job that pays for a place to live and heat and water and electricity, or that you have an education that allows you to work in a well paying job, or that you're healthy enough to go into work each day instead of spending most of your time seeing doctors to deal with cancer or MS or something else.
I don't think I've yet heard of a job where the person in it ended up doing exactly what s/he expected or wanted to do.
Honestly, that is a small problem in the scheme of things. If it's big enough to make your life that miserable, do one of two things: find another job or step into the Total Perspective Vortex.
Maybe instead of Ask Slashdot, this should be, "Whining Slashdot."
1. Google for "Manage your Manager" and read several random links.
2. Decide to forget your place in the hierarchy and look to your place in the team.
3. ??
4. Profit.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If you're hired by a company, you're paid to do your job, and look out for the interests of the company. If your boss is really not what is in the best interest of the company, and it's making a problem, you need to bring that to attention (discretely). Its possible (though unlikely) that he could be moved to a position (demotion even) where his talents could be used well without putting the company out of risk.
This sounds like a textbook case of the Peter Principle. Good luck dealing with it, but realize that if he doesn't have the guts to say he can't cope with his position, someone should, or you may not have somewhere to work for very long.
A big problem I see at nearly every company I've worked at is, concentrating on how to do your own job well is about the last thing people think about. You'll have tech support people making marketing suggestions, marketing people trying to dictate IT policy, etc. The issue is, you'll always make a terrible contribution that way, if you even manage to turn it into more than daydreams.
That may seem like something of a tangent, but hear me out. Just do your own job well. Do that number one, and if it looks like things that need doing aren't getting done, if they're not your job at all, then don't worry about it until you have your own job completely taken care of. The problem is, doing your own job is usually boring, a lot more work than daydreaming about what somebody else should be doing, and doesn't seem like it affects much. That couldn't be farther from the truth. If people always know that your job is done, they'll start leaving you alone; that's when you can branch off into other things. Special projects that make everybody else's life easier will get big notice. Here's the big (huge) thing though: make sure it's related to your job as closely as possible. Nobody knows how to do your job as well as you do, you spend 40 hours a week (if you're lucky) doing it--no one else does. Sure, work on managing the IT department better, but only once you have your own job done as well as it can be under the current management.
If you run into a situation where the people above you aren't giving you the support you need, leave as soon as possible, and stop worrying about it otherwise.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
In my experience, just do the job that is most needing to be done. If that is your job, great, if that is his job, fine. The best way to get a promotion is to do that job and you will eventually get the title and money. The worst kind of employee is one that won't do the tasks that need to be done b/c it isn't in is pay scale (up or down). You do have to remember not to work yourself to death but w/i the bounds of working hours, work on teh important shit as you see it. If they don't recognize your efforts in a timely manner, you can step into your next position w/ much more experience (which should translate into money/power as you wish)
It is likely that you have a line in your job description that reads 'and other tasks'. Many of us have it. Well, honestly, many of you have it since I helped my boss rewrite the job descriptions of my coworkers and me. This includes educating your boss. Here is the trick, if your boss is an idiot, what makes you think you are not? There are several essential skills needed for management, some skills are more important then others depending on position. These skills are technical skills, managerial skills, personnal skills, and networking (suck up) skills. Your boss has to have some technical skills to manage you, but not as great as you have. His level should be enough to make decent decisions based off the information you give him. He should have better managerial, personnal, and networking skills, but not as good as his boss, who would be offset by lesser technical skills. You discuss your perception with you boss and learn his perspective on things.
On a side note, most IT workers expect for some ungodly reason that their bosses have equal or greater technical skills. My manager has an ETL and BI expert (me), two ERP and business process experts (my cohort and me), several SQL experts (7 of us including me), two EDI experts (my cohort and another guy), two pc experts (another guy and me), web programmer (me), a server expert (me), 3 HR process experts (3 other people), and 9 cobal programmers (don't look at me, I don't do big iron). Add in the fact that he also has 3 records retention technicians, their manager, and two archivists (in the traditional sense), one would get the idea how diverse his staff is. How the hell could he be expected to have this skill set? Now he needed to be educated on how we work in some instances. He viewed script programming easy, yet he had never seen complex scripting for business apps on the web before. It is my job to fix misperceptions that would make his decisions wrong and it is his job to ask for information in my area of expertise before shooting his mouth off.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Just by your comment filled with "PHB", makes it seem like you have no respect for management at all. When management comes up with these projects for you to do is their job, they are trying to find ways to improve business productivity. Now the mistakes that a lot of managers do is not give IT or other employees for that sake, a clear image of what needs to be done so the people take it upon themselves to fill in the missing pieces. If you don't want to do the managers job when you come to a point in the project where you need to make a decision you go to management and work the direction you need to take. So for example if you need to create a report and you need to know if you need 3 decimal places in the percent or two. You could just look at the size of the numbers and guess what size is best, or you can go to the manager and ask him how many decimal points accuracy you need. This does a few things.
1. It keeps IT visible on the IT radar, even during the development process.
2. It puts more responsibility on management for bad decisions. So for the case the manager says he want 2 while they really need three you can point to the manager for that fault.
3. It creates a personal connection to you and management so after a while they know how you thing and you know how they think. So after a while the line of what is your job and what is their jobs get better explained.
Next I find it important to be face to face with management as much as possible. If they are in the same builing as you try to be as much face to face as possible. IT Departments have a tendency of doing things electronically, Fixing the problem of the persons PC over VNC vs. just getting off your but and working on the system. The reason why IT is Invisble is that you don't to much work to make yourself visible.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I hate to plug my own book, but...
1. Read the chapter titled, "Visibility and Perception"
2. Read the "Managing Your Boss" section of the chapter titled, "Being Happy"
3. Hand your boss a copy of the book and ask him to read "Visibility and Perception" and the chapter titled, "A Guide for Technical Managers"
Your question is exactly why we wrote this book.
I wonder if this is about me. I've been the Director of Development for the past six years at Zappos.com, but my signature for most of that time has read "Director of Plumbing" :)
I don't think it is about me, but maybe I'm just too much of a PHB to even know! Hey, Frustrated Dilbert, if I'm the guy you're talking about just sit down with me sometime and fill me in!
Cheers.
(leaving potentially ironic signature in place)