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Ask Slashdot: How Do You Prove an IT Manager Is Incompetent?
An anonymous reader writes "I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry. After just a little scratching, it has become quite clear that the 'head of IT' has no modern technological skills, and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question. (This has led to countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive.) How can one objectively illustrate that a person doesn't have the knowledge sufficient to run a department? The head of IT doesn't necessarily need to know how to write code, so a coding test serves no purpose, but should be able to run a project. Are there objective methods for assessing this ability?"
I can't believe you submitted this to Slashdot!
He is the IT manager because he is incompetent, or possibly incompetent because he is the IT manager. Not sure which comes first but they always follow.
IANAM, but the simple pseudo-code I came up with would probably work.
for each job responsibility
if !manager.capable(responsibility) then
++strikes;
if strikes > threshold
new CafeteriaCashier(manager);
You must be a techie. The coding kind.
Head of IT doesn't really need to know that much tech. His blind trust in his underlings might be an issue, but lack of technical skills is not really an issue.
What they lack is manager level (paywise) position for Solution Architect - or just good old fashioned software process, like Scrum .
Current incumbent is repeatedly failing. QED. What more do you need to know?
Sounds far better than a couple of managers I've had. One asked for our advice, which we duly gave, and he ignored, going with a contractor's more-expensive and convoluted suggestions every time - he was sideways transferred when it became apparent that he was getting kickbacks from this contractor. The next manager asked us for options, which we duly gave, and a recommendation as to which we thought was best and it's reasons, and so he chose the cheapest each time, regardless of budget... I then left when they gave the control of the IT department to the HR manager, after that IT manager quit.
... wait, what?
Take IT out of the equation. How do you prove any department head is incompetent?
The company should set specific goals for it. If the manager cannot meet them, demote him or let him go. It's really that simple. Be sure to include specific documentation requirements. If this guy or gal has bad project management skills, they won't be able to show what the department is doing. Be clear that things must improve or else. Give them a chance, but be firm.
You could also enact some form of employee survey in that department. Have folks turn them into HR with no repercussions. Have managers evaluate employees and employees evaluate their managers. This was done at a previous employer of mine and it was annoying to do but it did show upper management there were communication problems and things did improve. No one was fired, but there was significant training done with a few of the managers.
#1 - Figure out what convinced you that the head of IT is the problem. If you're thoroughly convinced, present those reasons to the business. If you have any reservations about your conclusion, then ask yourself if you really should be as convinced as you are about your conclusion.
#2 - Are you an employee, or a consultant brought in to investigate? Your fear of reprisal might temper how much you say.
#3 - Consider presenting some solutions at the same time you present your analysis. It might soften the blow. It also might leave a better taste in peoples' mouths if you find some nice things to say about the head/department as well.
I expect to be downmodded into oblivion for this, but...
Your best bet it to hire a management consultant to review the practices of your IT department to see where they are failing and and how to correct it.
Not only will you receive a (relatively) unbiased review of the state of your IT department from a third party, it will be coming from an outside source, which will give the report more weight with management even if your internal report reaches the same conclusions.
i.e., promote him and give his job to someone else. (*)
Start tracking a daily metric of how much time he spends on Slashdot.
Do projects get down on time, within budget and meeting the spec? Do the specs satisfy the business objectives? Is the department happy to come into work?
If yes, what's the problem, but I suspect in your case there are a lot of no's.
What industry are you in?
Talk with the IT engineers. They know what's happening. If most of them say the head is incompetent, then kick his sorry ass out of the company. Even if they're wrong, it's his job to make them feel "in safe hands". You can't go wrong.
Otherwise you need to do some serious checking whether:
1. Your goals were feasible, and
2. Your budget was adequate
Hope that helps
Head of IT doesn't really need to know that much tech. His blind trust in his underlings might be an issue, but lack of technical skills is not really an issue
There is a minimum level of IT competency that leads to credibility as an IT manager, however ... actual managerial skills? That's all about goals, deadlines, motivation, people, targets, and deliverables (among other things).
The most common metric for managers is project completion - not project satisfaction.
If your manager is consistently meeting their targets and performance objectives, you don't have much recourse - Unless you're at one of the very forward-thinking companies that actually accounts for subordinate satisfaction in managerial performance reviews. Which is unlikely, because even companies that adhere to that philosophy don't generally put it in practice.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
I've been asked to do something as part of my job, have no idea how to do it, can you help me?
Sounds to me like the dimwit submitter is just as incompetent at doing what he's been asked to do as the IT manager.
Which given that and the presupposed IT manager's incompetence suggests its actually the CEO that is the issue at the company.
B players hire C players.
I would assume that your company adheres to a basic ITIL management infrastructure. Who knows? Your post is incredibly vague. Surely ITIL allows you to quantify successes vs. failures / overtime / overbudget results? Can a root cause analysis be performed on these projects to see where fault lies? Maybe I'm telling you how to do your job here, but this seems like it should be easy to quantify.
You already listed all the failures of the IT department, recognized from middle management to the CEO. The buck stops at leadership... whether he's the smartest guy on the planet or incompetent, a leadership change seems to be in order.
Put another way, what will some other gauge of his competence will add to what is known?
Bosses don't care about details, competence and other technical stuff. They understand only two things:
The guy isn't making with his department the necessary target financial figures.
The guy isn't keeping his promised deliveries.
If those things are happening, he's on the way out anyway. If he manages to avoid those pitfalls, he's prime material for a promotion.
If you want to saw on his chair, the best way probably is to propose outsourcing of the IT department for less than he spends in his department. Managed IT-services and cloud computing sound very sexy at the moment to get the ball rolling.
You answered your question in your question. To wit:
.... and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question.
In other words, he's not managing.
This is why there are so many idiot managers out there. The metrics used to demonstrate their effectiveness/lack of effectiveness haven't been invented yet.
Of course, playing golf with other senior management helps offset something irrelevant like not possessing the skills for the job.
By any chance, are you referring to PricewaterhouseCoopers? In that case, there is a correction. They are running at 4 times the budget necessary to run the operations.
If it's your job to determine what the problem is, you should already have the skills necessary to thoroughly evaluate the situation and communicate your conclusions. If you've already determined that this person is the problem, what is left to assess? If you don't know how to objectively determine that this person is the problem, how have you concluded that this person is the problem? If you don't know how to evaluate someone's competence and can't explain your conclusions to the people who hired you, how can you be qualified to tell this company what's wrong with the department?
...that the incompetent one is the CFO who doesn't accept the reality ?
If you have to come to Slashdot to ask this question, are you REALLY qualified to help the company come to grips?
While the 'head of IT' and/or some number of IT staff may indeed ill suited to perform their jobs correctly, if I was involved in the situation even if my job wasn't ultimately affected, I'd be really pissed that my department's direction was changed based on the advice of a 3rd party that had to post an Ask Slashdot.
Every IT project needs to save the company money in some way and these savings should be easily quantifiable.
No ROI then no project should be funded
I have seen geeks fall on love with geeky projects that cost a lot of money, seem to have no end and dont do anything for the organization except to show how busy they are
All you can really do is hope that sooner or later his boss puts two and two together. In fact, they may have done in order to bring you on board with the remit you say you have been given. In light of that I supposed you could go through a document each mistake that has caused a project to overrun and hope that he is the common thread that unites all the projects.
Alternatively you could try getting the department to run within it's budget and force the necessary cuts be made to staff provisioning. This will force the IT manager to actually go round firing people. Since this is a very tough part of the job to do he might balk at it or at the very least screw it up in a way he can't blame on anyone else.
To be honest though this doesn't sound like you are entirely being truthful. If you were really in the position you are in you probably would have been given the right to fire the IT manager and recruit a decent replacement as part of the deal. This gives you the option to force him to raise his game and also help in with any additional training he needs to become a better manager.
When it come to firing managers you generally just pay them off and then give them gardening leave for the duration of their contract along with a cast iron reference they can take to another employer. This gives them a reason to go quietly without you proving they were shit at all.
If you do not have that and are effectively working under him or alongside him then you are on road to nowhere and might as well just concentrate on helping the department underneath him run well as best you can. Even an incredibly shit IT manager can look amazing if the department all know there stuff and do what they need to.
If projects are all necessarily complex that is not just the fault of the IT manager, that is also the fault of the person or people delivering them. Try working on them directly to get them to deliver better work, one possible way to do this is to subtly make them realise who is for the chop if the costs don't come down. Obviously you have to be very careful how you do this, it might help to pick one person who is on side already but also has a good working relationship with his colleagues and then drop a few hints.
If you are doing all this already and the IT manager is blocking you then you might end up in a situation where all you can do is take your consultancy fee and make a few suggestions around the edges.
I dont read
...if you're qualified to judge, in which case why are you asking /.?
Management consultant does this all the time. It really is a task for somebody focusing on management and organization, not on technology consultant. So call some nice people at a company like Arthur D. Little, McKinsey or similar. Of course, they will charge a lot to sort out this kind of situation.
If you really want to get into management consulting the easy path is typically to toss out all the value words and feelings you may have about the people involved. Don't even think words like "loathed", "ineffective", "parroting" etc. Instead you go to the hard facts. What is the properties of the department? How does it compare to other similar departments? Do they have procedures and routines? What are they? Do they have qualifications in relevant fields? etc. Don't fall in the trap of trying to pin everything on a single person, as this kind of situation is typically part of the culture of the department. The head of the department is a symptom, not the single cause of it all.
Also remember, that those that hired you are probably also responsible for hiring that head of department. Calling him incompetent is roughly the same thing as calling the people who hired him incompetent. Not a good way to build professional relationships or helping people.
Is the manager's name Jen? Does she say that Googling Google can break the Internet? Does she think that the Internet is housed in a little black box with a red LED on the top?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTBsm0LzSP0
That way everyone share the incompetence :)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
There are a lot of holes in the OP. How large is the medium sized company? How big is the IT department? What is the role of the IT manager in the company? Is he and administrator? Does he require technical knowledge? Does he require more knowledge of the specific business?
Without making massive assumptions, this is not a question that can be answered in any meaningful way.
What does the company require of the IT manager?
Start there. Then find out how the target is being missed.
Don't you have project managers to manage projects? Head of IT in corporate would not normally project manage (unless the IT department isn't very big).
Suggest an incredibly expensive, complex project that has no benefit to the organisation. Off the record, of course. Let him take _all_ the credit.
Sigger than your average
"The head of IT doesn't necessarily need to know how to write code, so a coding test serves no purpose, but should be able to run a project. Are there objective methods for assessing this ability?"
I would expect him to able to solve the Fizzbuzz test and explain what's the difference between a switch and a router or what is a DNS server and understand nested SQL queries. Yes, I know this is a very low bar.
By his job description.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Have you checked out if his team are giving him good info? Do you know he's actually over a reasonable budget, or is this just the CFO's opinion? What are his credentials for saying so? Is he hated because he doesn't know what the hell is going on, or because he constantly says no to unreasonable demands from other departments?
We have almost no information here for a fully justified and well reasoned response. For all we know he may well have screwed the CxO's daughter at an Xmas party and he's looking for an excuse to fire the guy.
He either delivers, or he doesn't. If he delivers then he's "Working as intended" and you need to adjust his performance management criteria to better reflect what you need out of him. Hell, he may be working just to fulfil those metrics because they're so out of whack with what he actually is supposed to be doing. My Line Manager almost got me fired because she kept making idiotic decisions without asking for my input, and having to pick up the pieces made me look incompetent. We had a stern chat about "treading on my toes" and she backed off, now we're both less stressful and things work better. Costs less, too.
I started rambling; Apologies for that. I'm trying to say that you don't sound like you have enough information to make this decision. If you don't know how to get that information, you probably should hand this project on to someone who does. It's what HR department exist for.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
...My consulting rates are very reasonable.
I had one tell me that ping was too technical and to talk to one of his workers instead.... I was left speechless. Project didn't fare too well.
Several recommendations:
1) You are working with C-Suite executives. They want something objective to measure against over time and they want to know how it impacts the bottom line.
2) Emphasize you are looking for operational improvements out of all of this, not headcount reduction (read: outsourcing will only trade off one set of problems for another).
3) Institute 360 reviews among the IT group on the condition of anonymity. Find common trends/recommendations from those in the trenches.
4) Same deal with the IT manager. Get 360 anonymous reviews from different departments at the same management level as the IT manager, and, get anonymous feedback from every employee in the IT group.
If one individual is the problem, the C-Suite will either reform or fire them. However, I suspect you will find its not just "one person" as the root cause, but a collection of things which need improvement.
Good luck.
Or in common parlance, a seagull.
You come in, make a lot of noise, shit on everything, and then leave.
You will probably have to use some kind of technicality to get rid of the IT manager. For my company, it was a combination of things, including the HR manager noticing that the IT manager was only coming into work like 4 hours a day on average (which was used with other circumstantial evidence). However, even after we got rid of that manager, we are still in the process of "hitting rock bottom" as we try to fix years of managing the department like a nation of fiefdoms . . . it is amazing how much damage one incompetent high level manager can do . . .
."). Until then, things will continue to be the wild west, so good luck trying to replace the old sheriff in town . . .
This is really why IT needs to establish some kind of professional certification like doctors, lawyers, and accountants. It is not so much that you will prevent the incompetent from getting certified (though, certainly, hard testing does help prevent that). However, the main thing is that it creates an incentive for any certificate holder to try to keep their certification (our fired IT manager actually brags about how little work he was doing) and provides employers some leverage ("please help us with a smooth transition or we will report you to your professional organization . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
you have the ability to assess and IT Manager, it means you must be able to be one yourself, thus, look at projects and see how they are handled, create your own baseline for each with time/efforts/etc. See, how long it takes and the reasons why and what a manager should do to avoid the pitfalls. That's pretty much your report in a nutshell.
Are there objective methods for assessing this ability?
Why yes, there are objective methods. Here's what you should look for:
their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at of what the CFO has deemed appropriate
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Connect the server room door handle to the mains. Page him to let him know about the free bagels next to the backup server. If he doesn't die, that doesn't really mean he's competent, just that he passed the first test.
I'm not sure this applies to all types of management, but in 30 plus years of IT experience, the ones who get promoted to IT management are the persons who are good at getting others to do their work and then manage to take credit for it. This perception is often amplified when the "manager " creates a convoluted solution which is then used to solve the problem that was created by the “manager” himself; he then gets recognized as a problem solver. On the other hand,problem free solutions are often under-recognized and under appreciated.
The problem with this sort of manager is that he lacks any sort of qualitative skill at analyzing his IT spending and resources.
I'm someone who's been involved in firing a couple of my immediate supervisors for being morons, and here's some steps that work. For purposes of illustration, the incompetent person will be named "Mr Dunce".
1. Get to know Mr Dunce's boss. You don't have to be best buddies, but make sure that the people 2 steps above you on the ladder know who you are and respect you. (This is always a good move whether or not you have an incompetent boss, actually.)
2. Assuming Mr. Dunce isn't getting caught obviously failing, you'll need to create it. A potentially good method: (1) Have a subordinate (or yourself if you are his subordinate) give Dunce slightly vague or incomplete answers to his questions. (2) Prime his boss before a meeting to discuss whatever it is with something like "I'd really like to know what you think - we want to make sure this is well thought-out." (3) In the meeting, Mr Dunce will promptly get peppered with questions that he can't answer with anything other than "err, I'll have to get back to you". (4) After a few rounds of that, information will start going around Dunce rather than through Dunce, because they realize that Dunce is slowing them down. (5) After a while of that, eventually people will start questioning what value Mr Dunce provides to the company.
3. Be patient about it. Depending on how popular Mr Dunce is, or how much the upper management had invested in Mr Dunce, it could take months to go from step 3 to Dunce being fired or shunted off to a powerless position.
I am officially gone from
A medium sized company asked you, and you asked slashdot. My alarm bells are ringing here. If you don't have decent background in this area, and you're query ends up on slashdot, I suspect that as a whole management of the company is screwed. Otherwise they would not have called you in, but rather someone with the right background. To be honest, this seems wrong from the very beginning.
And I note the thread is suggesting 'management consultant'. No, although an IT focused one would be fine. If you are going to establish if an IT team and its function are busted, its not a spreadsheet numbers game. Its an in the trench and looking at the wider picture. In most cases sadly, the truth is a broken IT depeartment is in fact a reflection of a broken management/board structure.
IT isn't easy. And some businesses assume it costs buttons, and that IT projects are simplistic things that just click click and are done. The reality is they can be hugely complex and require seriously good solid workmanship in development and production.
We`re all equal
If you do not know, then you are in no position to pick your boss, even if that silly concept would be a reality. Then even then, you turn to slashdot, to a bunch of mostly unwashed gpl fanatics, it just doesn't look good. Maybe you should have taken your silly imagination to a professional consultation firm or something.
Is it really your task to assess his competence? As you are asking /. - probably not. Proving that someone(who is not your subordinate) is not competent enough is always a problem. Generally its better to work around the problem than slam your head into it. You can point out failures and hope that someone finally notices, but that's about all you can do. There are no good outcomes for you in you jumping the command chain and flat out calling the guy incompetent.
You could search through the recent 'Ask Slashdot' articles and see if they have submitted any. That would be plenty of evidence to show they don't have sufficient knowledge to do their job.
SMART goals (Specific/Measurable/Achievable/Relevant/Time-bound) are typically used when discussing bonuses, but fundamentally they can also form the basis of a review process for somebody's base level ability to do their job, if the company does not have any other metric, which in this case it sounds as though they do not.
I suspect that the manager has high subordinate satisfaction ratings for the most part, as it seems he acts as nothing more than a mouthpiece for them, meaning they get what they want, while members of other teams do not see the performance issue as that of the IT Manager, but of the team as a whole, because IT is a "black box".
Depending on the employee rights and the politics of the company, it may be as simple as delivering a fact- and statistics-based report to the boss/board of directors. A complete breakdown of costs for every project and analysis of cost-overruns is probably overkill unless you are a consultant paid by the hour (but if this is the way you go, prepare a 1-2 page summary for presentation to the board, with the full 300 page report available for anyone who wants to read a more in-depth analysis).
At that point, your job is done. You were hired to produce a report, you have done that. Let them know that you can produce similar reports for other divisions if they want you to, and maybe ask them if their situation can be anonymised and used as a case study for your Management Forensics consultancy if they have the opportunity to review it before you publish the case study. Exit stage left, hopefully not pursued by a bear.
If you are angling to take over the guy's job, bear in mind that if you have a large part to play in firing a popular boss and then you replace him, you will have an uphill battle getting people on your side. The departure of the boss, and the introduction of business-oriented goals may change the atmosphere of the office... that together with you stepping in after sharpening the knife that killed your predecessor might result in a wave of departures from the team. As the new manager, the drop in productivity will be on you, not your predecessor. so you would need to turn it round quickly. All-in-all, I would say it is easier to let some other person take the management position and then step in when they almost inevitably fail - you are one step removed from the boss the guys liked, the tanking team performance is a god excuse to bring in some goal-based metrics, and by that time, people might have forgotten that you were around writing a report on the team in the weeks leading up to the popular boss getting the chop.
If he is incompetent, his boss is incompetent. The problem would have long since been solved otherwise. The problem is recursive, and responsibility ultimately rests with whomever owns the company. As has been pointed out, everyone there already knows exactly what the problem is and they don't care. Sometimes the real purpose of a company is to hand out money, not to make it more efficiently.
This situation is likely rampant in many companies. Isn't the Peter Principle something like some people rise to their level of incompetence. Many IT managers rise to that level but the dummies even higher up (CEOs, CFOs, COOs, Boards of Directors) can't see it in the folks they promoted to their level of incompetence. If they did, they would have to admit they're also just as incompetent.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
If you're a consultant/outside entity being asked to do this, then no worries. Just tell them like it is. You don't need any kind of technical test here: Just show them the trail of failed projects and unhappy employees/customers and how they all lead back to one source.
But if you are part of the company...or worse part of IT yourself....watch the fuck out.
Something stinks about this. Managers are usually the first target when it comes to determining blame for failed projects/bad internal PR. That's part of their job after all. The stuffed shirts know this, and if it was just about the IT Manager being terrible they'd fire him and bring in someone new. They don't need a third opinion to tell them the head of IT is incompetent. There's something else going on here, probably related to internal company politics, and you need to be sure you're not being thrown under the bus or are risking getting caught in the crossfire.
You have some general (factual?) figures about budget and some strong opinions...and you discovered that an IT manager is not a tech (common occurrence) you say he repeats what his subordinates say without question...So really, where is the actual justification for your conclusions?
All this reads to me is some sort of "In my opinion..." and "I'm not happy about it."
There are objective methods of assessment but people are biased. the bad news is that you are already biased and cannot judge objectively anymore.
It boils down to this; if you know how to do something that is better for the business than person X you should propose it and see what the feedback is. You would be more valuable to the company and appreciated by your peers if you suggest how to fix problems over pointing fingers, right or wrong.
Here's a thought, perhaps this person is under constraints or pressures that you are not aware of and is actually making the best of a terrible situation? -why is that not as feasible as your above opinion?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
My personal experience with terrible IT heads was that they had no business sense. The worst IT people I have seen had certifications a mile long (All in Novell and they wouldn't leave Novell to save their or the company's life). I have seen terrible IT people with no certifications (One who used a faxed around list of IP Addresses with names beside them to assign IP addresses to around 200 employees. The IP addresses were then manually entered into the desktop systems. And this was at a large telco). I have seen a terrible IT person who could alter the Linux Kernel at whim to solve fairly minor problems that the rest of us might use a cron job for.
But the best IT people had a real business sense. They would look at a million dollar UPS and examine it as a complete business case. (How much downtime cost vs the whole cost of buying and maintaining the UPS) They would also look at new IT policies from a whole business perspective. They understood that stupid policies like making everyone change their password every 30 days had a much larger cost than "a few seconds of their time". So the best IT people that I have seen did have a fairly good technical prowess but generally not awesome. It was their business skills that set them apart. The key threshold was that they recognized that IT supported the business and that in an ideal world the business could do away with IT as it wasn't their core business. So when someone asked something of them they didn't just yell "NO" and then back up their ridiculousness with technobabble; but looked at the business case and came back with a price.
Hi I am the head of IT of a midsize company and the management has called in this consultant. He is convinced my pointy haired bosses that my budget is twice the size and I an too naive and gullible and merely parrot my staff's opinions to the management. This consultant is so incompetent he is asking for advice in slashdot. How do I get him off my back, and demonstrate his incompetence to the PHBs?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I have been asked ....
Since you have to ask on an internet forum how to do this task, it's apparent you haven't done it before - or have any particular skills in management consultancy. If you had, two things would happen: (1) you'd know how to do the assessment and (2) you'd know not to ask a bunch of geeks how to solve a non-technical, management problem.
So we can assume that the CFO who gave you this task is him/her-self not very good at choosing the right person to do a job. (Alternatively, you've wandered in to a minefield of office politics and are being set up as someone's fall guy by powers you are unaware of). That probably answers the question about the IT manager - they aren't good, because the person who selected them for the job makes poor personnel decisions.
In fact, the CFO doesn't even appear to be very good at keeping the finances under control, if he/she is allowing the IT department to overspend to such a degree.
To answer your specific question, I'd go back to the processes that are in place. Check over the IT manager's past few annual reviews. What were the targets? Were they met? If not, what remedial action was taken? What weaknesses did he/she have identified and what was done to fix these?
If the answer is that there IS no review / personnel development programme in place, that explains your IT guy. If the reviews are failing to identify problems, then it sounds like the reviewer needs fixing, too. You can also get consultancies like Gartner to do assessments of the IT operation and it's efficiency. It could simply be that the CFO has unrealistic expectations of what it costs to run a modern IT department.
Whatever you do, tread very, very carefully.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry.
Is this not objective proof that a person doesn't have the knowledge sufficient to run a department?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
OP works at TxDOT
there used to be testing centers all around America for this, but they've since dried up. The testing procedure was fairly simple, you place a few quarters (or in the chintzy places, you'd buy tokens at like 3 for a dollar) into a slot, grab a soft cushioned mallet, and then attempt to whack some animatronic moles as they randomly popped their heads out of the holes in the top surface of the testing machine.
Like in the movies, you should approach the manager, ask him a few well placed questions wearing a microphone and broadcasting it to the authorities...
Seriously though.. the bigwig managers are too retarded to notice his incompetence... so you naturally assume that the biggest problem that this company has is a single bad IT manager?
Such optimism!
Get their resume and send it to headhunters. It's a lot easier to get them hired somewhere else than to get them fired.
My experience in situations like this is that the problem usually lies with the leadership of the organization. - Many projects fail or cost multiple times the original estimate because the business fails to put in the proper time identifying the requirements. They tell IT they want to do something and then send the IT group to make all the decisions. Then as the project get closer to completion they get more involved and the subsequent changes costs more money and takes longer. - The manager seems to be relying on the people who work for them for their advice. That's usually a good sign unless the entire IT group is useless. Have you reviewed the information the manager has provided? What is wrong with the advice or the information the group is providing? - Have you talked with the IT manager. Many time they know what the problem is or can give you a counter view that will help give the real picture of the problem.
You say: "countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive" Prove it. Then let management judge the manager.
(emphasis added) So, management asked you to find out why IT isn't working, and you do a "little scratching," and decide to blame the department's dysfunction on its leader. And then, what, call it a day?
Presumably you have lots of expertise in running an IT department yourself, or else management would not be paying you the large consulting fee they're giving you for this job. They are paying you a large consulting fee, right? They are giving you access to all their monthly reports, their ticket database, interviews with the employees, and weeks to do the analysis, right?
My quick read of this situation is that either management doesn't really care about root causes and just brought you in to give them some political cover to fire the guy they want to fire, or you accepted a difficult consulting job you're not qualified to do. My advice is to tell the company you made a mistake taking this assignment and run, don't walk, out the door. Or, go ahead and recommend firing someone after "just a little scratching" while collecting a paycheck for a job *you're* incompetent to do, if that's the kind of person you want to be.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
When I had the manager of useless that was driving me insane with his inept procedures I eventually flipped and spoke to the company boss. Turned out I was late to the party and pretty much most of the workforce had been complaining.
I backed it up with concrete examples of good procedures that had been replaced with mad time consuming ones (all updating a shared file on a filestore via phoning around to "lock" files verbally was the one that finally made me lose the plot). He was gone the next day.
Question is why are the team working for him not shouting about it if he is that bad? Are they all bad or is in fact the problem further up the chain?
Something suggests this is more than just a bad manager problem and if the poster can't identify conclusively why this manager is bad then he isn't looking hard enough or in the right places. Talk to this manager and his team - not the slashdot community. Then come back with more info if necessary.
The head of the IT department is there because his supervisor wants him there or is unable to remove him or is incompetent him/herself.
Therefore, the problem exists at a higher level.
Given that his fifedom is blowing the budget by 100% i would say not.
Is stuff getting done?? on time ??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
I worked at a hospital and the two head IT managers were stuck in floppy disk and DOS land. They had no idea what modern technology even was or how it worked let alone why it should be used by us. Some of their comments were so inaccurate and misinformed, I didn't even know how to respond. Now I'm 25 and I'm the head IT manager at a new company. Shocker, we're operating flawlessly and under budget.
The real problem is HR. They promote someone based on how many years they've been there. That's great for other departments like Shipping and Receiving or Marketing but for IT, the most qualified and informed person needs to be driving that ship.
If Dilbert hasn't been able to do it in twenty years, you won't be able to either. Here's how it works: the incompetent IT manager comes in; screws everything up; then leaves for another company right about the time that upper management gets the idea he/she is incompetent. Then they hire a new incompetent IT manager. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Proverbs 21:19
What they're looking for is an objective third party to confirm what they know. Focus on what matters to management: cost, productivity and effectiveness of the department. Tell them that when you see this kind of pattern, it's caused by ineffective department management. Interview individual contributors and ask them how decisions are made in their department and what role their manager plays in operations and decision making. Also, ask the IT people what they're working on and how they're going about it and why. Then ask the same questions of the IT manager.
You have the idea of who's incompetent wrong. Look in the mirror.
Unless you are his/her manager, thats not even your freaking job. Since you're asking here, again I say, clearly you aren't qualified anyway.
Learn your place, do your job, you aren't as impressive as you think you are.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Please do not use projects "on time" or "on budget" as a success indicator.
My current employer nearly always has all projects in "Green". As an underling (now I'm a Manager and yes I appreciate the irony) it was obvious to me that Exchange 2010 doesn't take 3 years to roll out, even for 10,000 users. Lync (just UM, not even Enterprise Voice) isn't a $1.4m project and it shouldn't take 18 months.
Once a project goes Amber, the PM's just ask for more money or time. Or worse, the Operations Manager kills it so he doesn't look bad. Sadly, he forgets he never delivered the business requirement.
"IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry."
The CFO already knows that the manager is incompetent, as evidenced by him calling in a second party to look into it. Theoretically he has already asked the IT head what the problem is, and got an unsatisfactory answer. I really do not see you obtaining any more evidence about his incompetence than already exists.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Practically every IT manager I've worked with wasn't suited for the task, only a very recent one (who had left a couple of weeks ago, sadly) was the best manager I've ever had, period. The manager before him, however, was particularly awful. If you have a rough situation and you're looking to resolve it, you really have two effective choices;
.
1) Just have a meeting the the IT Manager's bosses and tell them straight up. However, some organizations have a problem with trruth, honesty, and straight-fowardness. If this is your company . .
2) Send an anonymous email from an outside email account and, if you're particularly paranoid, send it from a public internet cafe or public wi fi. Be clear in the email why you feel you need to tell them anonymously and lay out a very simple case for why things are broken and how they won't be fixed until the manager's replaced. Give real world examples and put dollar amounts on the screw ups.
Most IT managers are not suited to be managers at all and many aren't even suited to be doing your work. I don't know how they get hired, but the good news is that it's much more difficult for managers to get away with torturing their departments than it used to be. If the rest of your organization is terrific but your only issue is with your manager, be glad - that's not a difficult problem to resolve. If the whole place is broken, you might want to save yourself the trouble and get a better gig.
A big part of IT issue is the CFO. How exactly does the CFO come up with an "appropriate" number without understanding IT systems?? The CFO is usually the problem himself/herself. For example, continual cost cutting cycles affect the quality of IT, especially related to IT staff. The continual turnover of people not only means that the creators of systems are often not with the firm but also current workers have no incentive to document or create understandable systems (in fact quite the opposite in order to preserve job security).
First, your IT Manager doesn't have to have any technical skills to be competent in his job. Some of the best managers I've had have had no technical skills. They just need to know how to manage, know when people are being strait with them, know who to fire and who to hire... oh, and stay out of my way.
Second, stay out of it. You're not doing yourself any favors by talking shit about your manager. Your job, believe it or not, is to make your manager happy. Make him look good, and he'll make you look good. If upper management wants to get rid of him, they will, and your input will likely not matter at all to them. If they decide to keep him however, they'll be sure to tell him he has a subordination problem in his department and he needs to deal with you. If you do get a new manager, again, your job is to keep him happy, make him look good. I've learned this the hard way... you don't have to.
If you continue on the path you seem to be on, you're likely going to be viewed as a drama queen and shown the door the next time they need to thin the herd.
Good luck.
You're the IT Manager. You grep the traffic logs for hits on the Slashdot.org story submission form and you associate that with the originating internal IP which was assigned to the consultants laptop on the ouside agency / guest VLAN.
Wait, why am I having to tell you this? Holy shit, they're both right; It's incompetency all the way down!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
..should try to figure out why he allways goes over the budget and nothing is working right. maybe just maybe the rest of the company are just is to incompetent to tell him what they are looking for... ...oh man we are so over budget because it did a bad job and i couldnt print right for weeks! fire the head of it fast!
kinda like this
i need to print
okay, i installed the nearest printer
no i need to print over there
okay i installed that printer too
but its not in colour
okay we bought a new printer for this department as you wish to print in colour
The job of the techies is to exercise their technical skills.
The job of the manager is to do everything else.
If the techies are (for the most part) doing their job, then the only alternative is the manager.
One caveat: I have seen situations where the upper execs have unrealistic expectations of the IT Manager (expect IT to do more for less to an unreasonable degree). In this case, it could be the CFO who is mistaken, and the dept. is under-funded.
I was a contractor for over a decade as a "hatchet man" to come in when large projects were in serious trouble, fix the project and then usually do an after action report which many times included firing people.
My recommendations:
1.) Hire someone like me to do this and completely side step the politics and anger that will come with dealing with this. Trust me on this. Get as far away from this as possible.
2.) On the question of evaluating IT budgets... current thinking is about 5.2% of the yearly gross of the business goes to IT but that's an average.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Why did you take this job if you can't answer this question yourself? Sounds to me like you oversold your skills.
Having been in such situations, when any sort of lower/middle manager starts using $20 MBA buzzwords such as "The Cloud" or "Webinar" (that one is like nails on a chalkboard to me), be afraid.
A better way is to read Dilbert on a daily basis. As soon as you start to think Scott Adams works at your company, you're in for a rough ride.
You do a root cause analysis on a selection of IT's failures. After you sort through the proximate causes, see if justifiable case can be made for management error as the root causes. If yes, the presentation is: I analyzed several failures and it all tracks back to Joe.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Unfortunately, to HR, most people with more business college experience than actual hands-on technical knowledge are the cream of the crop for management of technical minds.
Funny, I had one job where a techie was placed in management. His hair went grey in 5 years and he always wanted to seclude himself from people. He spent more time in Outlook, on the phone, in meetings, and traveling than he did touching his keyboard for tech work, but damn was he good when he could. Basically, management pulled him away from tech work. Coincidentally, those in management always wanted to know what those "darn tech idiots were doing" and spent more time and money on Six-Sigma and meeting about possible current and future activities rather than, you know, asking any techs or having them in the meetings. I'm straying from the answer now... The answer to the article's question is (humorously) in the subject line of my reply.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Your IT person is incompetent because he has been accepting input from his staff and acting upon it? OMG, you better put a stop to that!
Without even knowing the situation in your company, here is where I would start. Take the two or three most recently failed or late projects. Look at the project goals and requirements and look at the budget that was allocated/approved. Was the project really doable at that level of funding? If yes, then, look for specific reasons why it failed, and not just technical reasons. There could be supply chain problems. There could be interference from other departments. There could be design changes along the way, etc. If the answer was no, the funding was not adequate, then look into how the funding amount came into existence. Was this the amount the manager asked for, or was this what was given to the project and it had to be made to work?
Very often, it is easy to blame the IT manager or department, when the obstacles to have a successful project are outside their control. However, from the title of the summary, it sounds like the decision has already been made that the person in question is incompetent and you are just looking for a way to prove it. Usually, incompetence doesn't need to be proven, it is self-evident. So then, maybe he/she really isn't incompetent and the problem lies elsewhere.
Have you looked at the Joel Test: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/12/26/1424243/joel-test-updated
When I want to rule out development contractors that have gotten their foot in my door via nepotism I use that as a polite objective metric for rejection.
If there indeed were any objective method to determine whether a manager (of any field) is competent or not, it would already be employed: we would see a trend over time of incompetent managers being detected and removed. Instead, we observe that incompetence tends to accrete in management over time; ergo, no such method exists.
A head of IT doesn't necessarily have to run projects, let along write code. What they do have to do is understand the business and IT well enough engage senior managers and set a direction that moves the organisation forward and improves efficiency. Once the direction is set your head needs to have the soft skills to get people aligned with it. The key skills are the ability to communicate (at every level), set a clear direction, motivate and develop people, build a strong organisation. Somewhere in that strong organisation there needs to be people who create processes (ITSM) and know how to run projects (programme office). Among other things I'd be inclined to do is assess staff satisfaction in the IT department. Very broadly, if they are hate their jobs and their bosses it's extremely likely that they have poor leadership. This is a bit different if the organisation is small (rather than medium), of course.
Lackey: Boss, this employee is trying to prove you are incompetent!
Boss: I can prove that as well as he can.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I agree with everyone who has said some version of "hire a consultant" to evaluate the situation.
Since you were "asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective" - I'm assuming that you are the consultant they hired
Think of your job as proving "I.T. malpractice" - with the specific role of proving "I.T. negligence." The manager was negligent if they weren't "reasonably skillful and careful" - which you can prove by taking those "countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive" and explaining what a "skilled and careful" professional would have attempted (i.e. the simple, cost effective, solution)
calling the manager "incompetent" isn't much better than saying that they are "stupid" (both of which may be true - but are hard to objectively prove).
the company might want to keep the manager around for some reason (*cough* nepotism *cough*) so the preferred solution might mean getting the manager "trained up" (.. and I'm guessing that they don't want to fire the manager - or they would have done that by now...)
of course ymmv, ianal, and all those other acronyms - here is a place to start for the theory
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
the 'head of IT' has no modern technological skills, and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question.
It is also a sign of good management when responsibilities are delegated to subordinates. And input is sought from the people actually doing the work. Here, you might have a case where this has gone overboard due to management incompetence or a clique of buddies lead by the boss. Its up to senior management, or the board of directors to sort this stuff out.
If IT is a major cost center of your company, it is screwed. But this isn't always the case (if its not a part of your product or service). If it represents a small cost, even though it may be over budget, senior management may not care. They might view it as a 'hobby shop' for their buddies. So now, you have to ask yourself if working in such an environment is worthwhile.
Have gnu, will travel.
Holy shit, they're both right; It's incompetency all the way down!
It is bidirectional! It is incompetence all the way up as well as all the way down!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Do or die. If incompetent, replace with a manager, not a bullshitter.
you could prepare a powerpoint presentation to show his superiors. managers love powerpoint presentations.
or excel. managers love excel, because it looks like something related to money
"runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate"
because the CFO is competent enough to judge the appropriate budget of IT.
Document in detail everything he does, everything you do, and all conversations including ones at the coffee pot/hallway.
Just follow this helpful online guide to dealing with management and all of your problems will go away. Well, for two weeks. And there may be some additional legal entanglements if you're not careful.
Hi I am the head of IT of a midsize company and the management has called in this consultant. He is convinced my pointy haired bosses that my budget is twice the size and I an too naive and gullible and merely parrot my staff's opinions to the management. This consultant is so incompetent he is asking for advice in slashdot. How do I get him off my back, and demonstrate his incompetence to the PHBs?
Are the management consultants that were sent onto your site named Bob Slydell and Bob Porter? Are they thinking that slacker Peter Gibbons should be promoted and given as many as 4 direct reports?
Managers should be appointed by the district Soviet and recallable by direct vote of the workers. They should be fed lots of corn and sometimes a melon or a sausage if they are good. If they are bad, spray them with the hose on their noses! Otherwise they will not learn. Also, USA is the shittiest country and everyone who likes USA is a moron. China is the greatest! Also North Korea is awesome fuck lying American war propaganda!
I learned earlier in life that when you speak freely and address ideas or incidents with good data, you are either lying law enforcement or an intelligent individual who is about to be flogged or talked down to. For some reason I keep on presenting truthful information and being yelled at or made fun of.
also add it a real apprentice system to IT that will get real training as well.
The answer is that the CFO is incompetent for having not already figured this out for himself.
They both need to go.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"How much time to actually spend on these TPS Reports?"
You're an outside consultant right?
Jeezus just take the CEO aside and recommend the guy gets fired.
I'm concerned you're even asking this.....arent you sure of your own abilities enough to accurately confirm this guy is the real problem? Have you considered that it might be YOU who has the position they dont have the skills to perform well in?
Isn't the budget previously approved? If the head of IT ran his dept within the approved budget, whether it was 0.5X or 10X industry norm, does it really matter?
Senior management *APPROVED* the budget and he stuck to it, end of story.
I believe in the Monty Python Witch Test methodology for determining how to expose bad managers and management.
If the manager burns, then he's made of wood.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
How Do You Prove an IT Manager Is Incompetent?
You don't. You walk away. That has always been my suggestion whenever someone has to come to a point of having to prove his/her manager is incompetent. OTH, your situation is quite unique because you have been tasked with root-causing an IT department's woes. That is quite a pickle you have there.
"I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry.
Based on what? Your description of the situation hints to some very interesting, poisonous dynamics within that company. Sounds more like scapegoating that problem solving to me.
After just a little scratching, it has become quite clear that the 'head of IT' has no modern technological skills, and has been parroting what his subordinates have told him without question. (This has led to countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive.)
Well, this will also tell me that the subordinates are incompetent either. Subordinates should be competent enough to provide sound technical advice. They might not have the middle-to-upper company view to make IT and enterprise architecture decisions (which can lead to unnecessary complexity at the "macro" level.)
However, and barring significant managerial interference and politics, they should be competent enough to keep things efficient, workable and sufficiently simple within their own silos. Rarely you will ever see a situation as the one described being solely the result of an incompetent IT manager.
One could argue that the "parroting" was in essence supporting what his subordinates were passing to him. True that a manager of IT should be capable to tell from the technical factual to the bullshit, at least from a 10k foot view. But he is also expected to rely on his (supposedly) trustworthy subordinates.
IT manager -> strategy.
subordinate -> tactical.
Doesn't matter how good an IT manager is. If the subordinates are shit, no manager will ever be able to compensate for that (and viceversa.) I'm not saying that the IT manager in question is worthless. I'm saying that if the inherent complexity is due to him parroting what his subordinates passed to him, then the subordinates are shit as well.
SORRY. IT. TAKES. TWO. TO. TANGO.
How can one objectively illustrate that a person doesn't have the knowledge sufficient to run a department?
You are going to have to prove that key (and yet poor) decisions have been made by this person consistently and continuously. Decisions that are/were self-evidently poor ones. Passing/parroting poor decisions all the way up should be enough to illustrate that. The corollary of this, however, is that you will also be demonstrating that incompetence runs vertically deep.
How can you salvage that. I don't know. But if you lay the blame sorely on the IT manager, then you are not solving, you are scape goating.
The head of IT doesn't necessarily need to know how to write code, so a coding test serves no purpose,
No. If you think that, I don't believe you are technically competent to make these kind of evaluations. You might not need to know to develop software with the specific stacks being used. But you have to have some type of development knowledge (either from direct experience as a developer or indirectly as, say, a DBA or network administratior, for example.)
but should be able to run a project.
Here we are conflating the role of head of IT with the one of a project manager. This is ok for small companies, but for mid-size companies and up, you better separate the two. If this mid-size company does n
Every manager should have a clear plan, be able to evaluate (read drive) its progress, employ more resources if necessary and report a clear status to all the stakeholders.
Its not rocket science, hey..hang on...maybe it is rocket science after all.
Figure what should be done, write the plan, monitor progress, use the grey cells to put contingencies into the plan when/if necessary and keep everyone happy, motivated and delighted with your performance.
If that all fails, then fGs, cover your own ass!
This has scapegoating written all over it. I could be wrong, but I've seen enough of these (never directly affected but just as an outside observer) to come to this conclusion.
He might be incompetent in managing, but you better be damn sure you are more competent than him in office politics before you start anything. Are there senior employees who share your viewpoint and are willing to say so? Make sure the manager is not a drinking buddy with higher ranking managers. If you are just a newcomer and he has worked at the post for years, keep your nose out of it alltogether. Office politics are whole different game, and better for you if you never get involved in it.
Something that I did as a manager was to have an HR person that everyone trusted be the recipient of anonymous evaluations. Can't remember who made up the questionnaire - I think that I and the HR person collaborated. Then HR summarized the results and I had some good info.
I think that every manager's review process should include such a subordinate evaluation. You may be able to "manage up" and keep a good reputation with your bosses, but it's hard IMO to fool your subordinates.
I have been asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry.
What does that mean anyways? More important metrics would be the number of bugs introduced, number of fixes per month, number of successful deployments. Similarly, across the organization, how do different departments categorize their requirements (what is the percentage of new requirements that are considered as non-negotiable priorities, do departments force requirement changes in the middle of development, etc?)
One can easily run with twice the budget if every other department is dicking around with impossible-to-manage dynamics. Furthermore, budget costs is only one metric. What about savings? You can easily put a number on the cost of a bug defect (downtime, man hours, loss of salary by employees being idle due to downtime, etc.) So a reduction or absence of defects translates to savings by not incurring into them. Then you compare that against budget costs.
If the CFO or you didn't look into that angle in an objective, quantifiable manner, then this is seriously scapegoating.
Unfortunately, incompetence is prevalent. That being said, an IT manager needs to manage resources. Any knowledge they have is valuable but not 100% necessary. I have always defined a technical manager as someone who picks up on things each day and a non technical manager as someone who closes their ears and refuses to even try an understand 'all that tech jargon'.
I seriously doubt that it is appropriate on any level to try and 'expose' this person as incompetent. There is a strategy called 'managing up', which sounds like what you are interested in but it usually backfires. If the incompetence obvious to you then it is obvious to others. (or maybe your perception is off?)
I have been in a management role before and I know first hand that managers are the last to get any credit and the first to take criticism. It is truly harder than it looks and most of the time it is a thankless job.
If anything you should take some classes and apply for the IT manager position. Walk a mile in their shoes and get back to us here on Slashdot when you find out how easy it is and how everyone who works for you is a huge fan of yours and how your projects all go perfectly now that you are in charge.
It can be frustrating when you are so exceptional that you can determine your superior is inferior. You can go somewhere else and find a similar situation eventually or you can move into the position yourself. Optionally you may just grow out of it when you realize that some people come off as incompetent for many different reasons. In real life you may not be able to change everything you think is wrong just because you have a title. Some are truly incompetent and Darwin's theory will eventually take care of that. Others appear incompetent but may not be that bad. (be careful what you wish for, you may find that there are worst possibilities or worst yet you may have to do that job yourself)
One thing to keep in mind is that it is not illegal or immoral to put someone who is less than qualified in a position. Also, if you are feeling like you are struggling in your career and not on top of your game you are stretching and growing into a position. (that is a good place to be as long as that feeling is temporary) Upper management may love the work being done and any effort you make to work against them may be perceived as sabotage. (that doesn't look good on anyone)
My advice is to be careful with this. Tipping the scales of opinion is very passive aggressive. Confront him/her on specific item that you disagree with in real time. Pick your battles wisely and handle this one on one. (not in a group setting) We all have to work with people and we are not going to agree all of the time.
Say things to their face in a respectful and professional way. Choose your words wisely as managers are very busy contrary to popular belief and based on your tone and overall message you can quickly discredit yourself and define yourself as a problem if you are not careful. A better way may be to carefully craft an email explaining your position. Read it several times and search for things that could be taken wrong. Edit and correct until it is professional enough and concise enough that no matter who it was forwarded to the message is clear and cannot be misconstrued. The goal is correct a specific item, not to discredit, blame or otherwise put someone on the defensive. (avoid sarcasm!!)
Looking for ways to discredit someone above you is a bad idea and not necessary for reasons I explained above. Things like this tend to take care of themselves if they are bad enough.
Techies get attitudes. (we all do to some extent) We get frustrated because we know so much and are so much smarter than everyone. (at least we think we are) Don't let your ego get the best of you. You can and will be replaced if you can't play nice with others. Don't paint yourself out to be a techie/bully type. Slashdot doesn't have an answer for you on how to overthrow your leadership. My advice is to walk a mile in their
It sounds like the problem has to do with management of the corporate projects and scope creep. Scope creep is where a project has a defined set of goals that need to be met but then are expanded as additional "needs" are identified, usually mid-project. This results in overly complicated and wildly over budget projects.
My guess is that the IT Manager needs to either hire a good project manager or needs training in project management. It's also important for the organization to adopt good project management processes and for upper management, including managers on the business side, to understand these processes.
If the projects are being outsourced, you need to stay on top of the contractors. They need to understand that any functionality changes needs to go through a formal approval process. You also need to build in payments at project milestones and penalties if they are missed. Otherwise they will be happy to keep expanding the project as that means a bigger paycheck for them.
You also should look at the proposed solutions being submitted to the IT manager. If these are purely IT projects (i.e. Email, Network Management, etc.) coming from IT, then it's possible that the solutions being proposed are not being scaled correctly for the current size of the company. Sometimes management gives direction to IT to build projects that can scale to a company much bigger than they currently are.
Offer them more money to spend, If they don't take it, they are Incompetent as a Manager
The Peter Principle is a proposition that states that the members of an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit, will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability
Hm, interesting. I like the characterization, and perhaps it explains my current employer's angle on promotions: step one is to excel and display mastery of your current responsibilities (the Peter Principle) while step two is to successfully operate at the level the promotion would award. This is especially useful to the employer in that they have such candidates working (or trying to work) at a higher level than they are paid. I don't think this works without step two.
It works even better when the promotion comes with a bonus to compensate for the time the worker "should" have been in the new position (so s/he doesn't feel taken advantage of).
(Interestingly, this step two isn't mentioned on the wikipedia article. Instead, its second corollary, which is basically the beginning of step two, states that training should happen before the promotion. Close, but not necessarily strong enough; knowing duties and being able to satisfactorily perform them are two different things.)
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
The use of "IT" in the job title is debatable. But the word "Manager" is a dead giveaway for Incompetence.
The Dilbert principle
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The CEO and management are all aware that this guy has to go, but have a problem. IT was ignored as an inefficient and overly priced group for many years, but it was accepted as there were more pressing items in need of attention, or profitability made it easier to accept. Now that they have time to properly address the situation, the problem became clear immediately, but they are saddled by a decade of acceptance of the norm and a lack of specific documentation of each failure along the way. Wanting to avoid any chance of a lawsuit, new failures have been well documented and dissatisfaction has been communicated, but there is still a long period of "favorable" reviews for what were unfavorable results. Broken deadlines, missing features, and cost overruns are all objective measures that show current problems. Are there other metrics, or procedures, that can show that a lack of aptitude will lead to future failures, and that the most recent failures aren't unique? (Again, on paper, there were no failures for a very long time. Months could be spent on digging up old contracts, invoices, and emails that may exist, but that is clearly not ideal.) As always, there have been some great commenters from Slashdotters below. Any more would be appreciated.
Ask him where the servers store all their data?
Ask him which Linux server is running the Microsoft Office?
THEY hired YOU to fire HIM and you want US to help YOU fire HIM..... I think YOU are incompetent as well and THEY should fire BOTH of you.
You should help the IT manager's manager articulate his/her expectations of how the department should be run. Your value add here is to make sure the expectations are acievable by a competent IT manager, are actually useful results for the organization, and to the extent possible, objectively measureable. If the expectations can be clearly articulated, then the offending manager either measures up (which is a win) or he is fired for cause (also a win). That's assuming the IT manager's manager has it in him to fire somebody.
First off, the budget should be a non-issue. All the CFO's saying there is "IT's more expensive than I think it should be.". Well, that's usually the case. Not because IT's spending too much, but because non-IT management often underestimates how much IT really costs. And in any case, budgeting is the CFO's field. He shouldn't need to be bringing in outside consultants to handle that. I'd push that part aside for later.
As for the head of IT lacking technical skills and "parroting" what his technical people tell him, WTF? First, the head of IT isn't a technical person. He can't be completely oblivious, but his job's mostly organizing things and interacting with management. He has technical people under him who know the technology and are supposed to be giving him advice on the technical details. And it's considered a problem when he's listening to them and taking their advice? Sorry, as a technical person my first reaction is that the problem there isn't with the head of IT, it's with the outsider who's saying the head of IT should be ignoring and not trusting his own technical people.
Now, the IT department being ineffective, that's a valid point to look at. But by what metrics? What are they being expected to do, what resources are they being given to do it, and where and how are they failing to get the job done? If the CFO's moaning about costs, have you considered that the IT department may be being asked to do a lot and then not be being given the resources (budget, staff headcount, training, software packages, documentation, support contracts) needed to do the job? All too often I've seen IT departments where management's cut staffing by 50%, doubled the amount of work they want done, and then been shocked when projects don't meet deadline or fail completely. If the head of IT's really responsible for the failures, you should be able to lay out the resource allocation vs. the project load and show the failures. That's where I'd start my research. And I wouldn't start by assuming any particular cause, I can't judge that until I've gotten the information laid out.
As far as the IT department being loathed, again I'd start by asking why. More often than I can count I've found myself on the receiving end of vitriol from other departments because I'm forcing them to get work done by the deadline they promised when they really don't want to do it. I've also found my self on the receiving end of similar vitriol when someone in Marketing has promised a new feature or product and I won't back down from a position of "We're already at 150% resource allocation. If you want this new project done by the deadline you specified, we need to postpone at least 3 other projects to free up the needed time and resources. Which 3 do you want us to postpone?". If IT's loathed by other departments, first start by figuring out whether they're loathed because they're being jerks, or merely because they're doing their jobs and other departments don't like it when they don't get their way. If it's the former, then HR and not the CFO needs to be involved. If it's the latter, then it's the other departments that need talked to about what their responsibilities and obligations are.
Since there's not a lot of actual response to the O/P....
First, I'd document why no other department likes them: get statements not just from dept heads, but users - one manager, maybe two users in each other dept that say they have a problem with IT.
Talk to the manager, and get him to talk about why he thinks other depts don't like IT, and why his dept has had deadline and budget problems.
Then discuss with the lower level managers and/or team leads about several (three each?) projects they've been involved with, and what the big issues were that kept them from succeeding.
Finally, maybe, talk to the IT manager again, and this time you'll have some points (I don't think I have to tell you not to bring up he said/she said, or personal issues) to ask him about, and get his response. Most managers I've known want to talk... and in this case, he may give you enough rope to hang him out to dry.
mark
was actually uttered by a middle IT manager at my last job. I gave her the look you're probably thinking I did - halfway between dumbstruck and stifling a hearty laugh.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
This rates interesting, but I have no points today...
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
I've read this as "CFO sees his/her money going down the toilet and wants to know why. CFO is also aware of comments questioning the competence of the IT Manager".
My opinion is that the CFO just wants to know whats happened to their money and either because they are too busy (read as "doesn't want to get involved in an investigation", which really means 'I don't want to deal with the human side') and they have brought you in (or someone else) to deal with it.
In my experience, these things are not always straight forward.
It could be that the Manager isn't so technical and relies on his staff for advise (for which may possibly suck) and he/she goes with it (as she/he doesn't know any better), but the Manager is generally fine at other aspects of Management (see other people's advice on how to measure that).
It could be that his staff, or one of his staff have an axe to grind and possibly want his position, so are deliberately feeding him/her duff advise to trip them up, or are simply moaning to his/her managers because they simply don't like him/her and want them fired.
It could also be the same coming down from the top.
You should keep your eyes wide open and investigate all areas before just telling the CFO that the Manager sucks (with no evidence to back it up).
This word "incompetent" is a pretty strong word, which is very contextual. In evaluating this guy, your job is also in effect, to decide what that word means and how it applies to this guy.
Is he "competent" as an IT manager? Perhaps he mostly is. Of course it doesn't sound like he takes the job to the next level or is doing much in the way of leadership or has much vision of his own. But he may not be allowed such freedom, and as simlpy a manager, he may be very competent. He might be a very effective buffer between the executives and the workers, receiving change orders and.tracking their implementation, etc. Does the CIO really want an IT manager who has the balls to say to his face, that he's completely wrong? Is so, this needs to be communicated by the CIO to the IT manager who probably perceives his job as one of keeping things moving without rocking the boat.
The overbudget problems may be not the fault of one guy, but are more likely a systemic problem with how top management and other departments relate to IT, and what the expectations are. IT can provide a timeline, but if top management keeps inserting top priority items at the 1 and 2 week deadline level, then the manager is not really responsible for the timelines he produces. In such a scenario, anything scheduled beyond 6 months may never get done (and 18 month backlogs of projects are pretty typical in IT.)
If there is an adversarial relationship with IT being "loathed by other departments," then there is basically no joy to be had for the IT folks showing off how talented they really are.
I'll tell you a secret. If you want a real indicator of whether the IT manager is bringing actual talent and vision to the table, find out whether he is seeing synergies in the backlog of unstarted projects and secretly designing or implementing them in such a way that one project often directly facilitate one or more other projects on the list.
Strategy and vision. He may still have it, even if nobody else can see it.
So you're bitching how he listens to his subordinates, but your submitting to slashdot...
I accept the Peter Principle logic.It was also in Gilbert & Sullivan's 'Pinafore' "When I was a lad," etc. The chief of the navy had never been to sea. I'm just wondering who should be fired - the IT manager or consultant. You are a consultant being paid big bucks. You are eminently expendable. You see the facts, and 1. Don't know what to do. 2. Can't assess incompetence. 3. Need to ask total strangers for advice Why on earth did they hire you?? :-))
I know little about software, and less about management. I would report as follows:
A. Initial goals and target budgets of recent projects vs finished results, (They wanted X - they got q). Compare with 'going rate' for subcontracting same.
B. Reasons in the company for poor relations with IT dept. What do the other workers say?
C. Analysis of the working spirit of each IT employee and opinions as to what contributes to poor environment. No names - a table with %s.
D, Capital expenditure critique.
E. Work practise critique. My son is a senior developer; he writes a test for his code, writes the code, and tests it. Messy, but bug free.
F. Steps in place to: save money; check project meets goals; rein in developers wanting to add unnecessary crap or rewrite interfaces with no advantage; budget checks, etc..
G. Lastly, interview the IT manager and find an appropriate alternative post for him in the company if possible. Can he do Java? Manage the office? Train noobs? The company are more likely to act if they can offer alternative employment.
Write your conclusions. Then scatter your conclusions in the report like spice so when they look at the conclusions they are not surprised. Take care with the executive summary - it's all most of them will read. Make it long enough and jargon free.
Now you've consulted us for free on how to earn your money. We have told you. Give something back to charity.
If the submitter found the cause of the problem with "a little scratching" I doubt that the ones who hired him are in the dark as to what the problem is. What they need is outside confirmation that absolves them of responsibility. It may be productive to create a list of best practices for IT managers (preferably one from a generally accepted outside source) and see how the guy stacks up. If you want places to look for this, I suggest you start with CIO Magazine and maybe get a book or two on the subject. (Here is one. There are plenty of others.)
Just keep in mind that, if it works out, you might find yourself making a career of this. There is no dearth of incompetent IT managers out there, nor of bosses looking for a good excuse to give them the axe. Whether they deserve it or not.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Presumably, the others who own/run this medium-sized business are the ones who've asked you to help them "come to grips" with the conclusions they've already drawn. In my opinion, they are the bigger part of the problem. They're the ones who put this "head of IT" in place in the first place and they are the ones who have allowed the situation to spin so far out of control that they feel the need to call in someone from the outside to "fix" it. The latter is the real issue: it appears that, regardless of gender, they lack the requisite man-parts to dismiss the "head of IT" who they have such a problem with and they're looking for someone else to do the "dirty work". The IT person is the least of the problems for this medium-sized business. Le roi est mort, vive le roi!
You just described what most companies think about their IT department.
The CFO, pffft.
The CFO should not be on top of the IT department, most places are making this switch.
The other departments probably have unreasonable demands, can't do a damn thing without the IT deapartment holding their hands. And then they complain about them. Sounds like a great place to work.
Anyway, places like this, it will always be the same. Bashing on IT is part of the culture at this place. You can replace the team 3 times and won't see a difference. At that point they will outsource for 10 times the money, get 10 times less service, spend more money to bring it back in house. You don't know what you got till its gone!
Anyway, IT guys, don't play into this bullshit. We are special. We don't care about other peoples day to day. They get paid to run the damn business, we get paid to run computers. They just want to make us look like other departments. They are just jealous. We live in our own little world, do whatever the hell we want, and ignore the rest of the company as much as we can (when they aren't calling us at 2 am the sky is falling the sky is falling the password is broken)
I call bullshit on this one.
If you were really hired by a medium-size company, you would be professional enough to a) not require advise from /. on the very stuff you're being paid for and b) would not post any details of a job on a public forum, with our without names.
My best guess is that you're in the IT department and don't like your boss, and the imaginary consultant is someone who you hope/dream/fantasize about. Not judging you, we've all been there. IT management is notoriously incompetent, and if you haven't had at least one boss in your career who was utterly and completely a result of the Peter Principle, then you haven't had much of a career, yet. :-)
But please, don't take your fellow geeks for fools, we aren't.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yes, as many have noted.... client organization unhappiness and excess spend are objective metrics which call into question what's going on.
But ... dig deeper.... are the client organizations behaving rationally or are they constantly asking for change after change? Obviously the organization is dysfunctional ... but is it the IT director, the entire IT department or the organization as a whole?
If it IS the IT director... I imagine the issue he's(or she) has been there for a long time; HR will want "proof" that replacing them isn't age discrimination or any such thing. If the client organizations are healthy and have reasonable expectations and your impression of the "line worker" IT folks is good, perhaps you need to have a heart to heart with the IT director. If he is "parroting" what his staff tell him, he's made some poor hires. He may even understand that, but lack clues as to how to hire better. See if they are rational, and self-aware enough to recognize their limitations and work with he/she/it to hire someone to be the "technical honcho" ... chances are the IT director wouldn't have gotten the job and kept it so long if they didn't have good relationships with the executive staff. That DOES have value. Leverage it, and help them improve ... if they are capable of it.
Just sacking someone is seldom enough; they will have built up an empire of mixed wood (some dead, some living, some actually thriving) and you need to help them prune and fertilize ... not just toss the whole tree away (unless, of course, their entire IT department really could be replaced with SaaS and IaaS and have done with it).
The details of the organization and people matter.
As earlier posters noted, if this is all news to you, you might not be the right consultant.
Red flags go off in my head when you say 'prove X is incompetent'. You've already loaded the deck against a person and that's not fair. Even if you can narrow down the source of problems being related to what goes across the desk of this particular company's position, there can be many other reasons besides 'the manager is incompetent'. It could be company culture which undermines that position. It could be that the subordinates are the ones who actually need training, and sure, maybe the manager needs more training. Pointing a finger at somebody and listing a laundry list of 'proof' that they are incompetent isn't going to solve anything. I get the impression that you might have been hired because of your technical ability but are now in the position of trying to solve a personnel problem which might be a bit out of your depth. The company may even already did their which hunt and just want to use you to justify firing the guy(?). I'd say walk away. Don't be that external consultant who was hired to recommend sacking a guy, it never ends well. At best, it's just bad karma, at worst you would have made an enemy for life who could make his goal in life to make you miserable. It's not worth it. It's the company's own responsibility to determine who is a bad employee and clean their own house.
What are you getting paid for by this company?
If you we're brought in to make this assessment, your post points to your incompetence in this field.
It works even better when the promotion comes with a bonus to compensate for the time the worker "should" have been in the new position (so s/he doesn't feel taken advantage of).
Yeah, because this actually happens..
If you can do the job for less, guess what.. you're stuck there. And most likely, a supervisor is going to pat themselves on the back, and showcase to their superiors their "ability" to get subordinates to do more work for less, as an example of their shining managerial skills and beneficence to the company, and also as a good reason why they (not you) should get a raise.
I hate to be such a cynic, but I've seen what I've seen.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Chances are this IT boss is being protected somehow.
I know of one guy who got a new car every time he got a complaint of sexual harassment. He basically bullied the company into coughing up a car by threatening a lawsuit for slander/libel if they didn't make it go away. He gets a new car and the complainer gets fired.
As a consultant you should be thankful you're not in the chain of command.
Please, use your position of safety to be candid and ruthless in your evaluation. Document whatever you can and leave it in the hands of whoever hired you. This director needs sacked.
Agreed. I have been fortunate in my career that I have had a series of real mentors who have been there to guide me through the various challenges that come up in IT consulting. Now that I am a manager, I foster the same kind of master / apprentice relationship with my employees. I am there to help them become competent IT professionals. They are there to help me keep the systems functioning and the users happy. I make everything happen by giving them responsibilities and tasks to accomplish, then being there for them as a resource if they get stuck.
In the process, I pass along to them the good habits that I have learned. I also try to point out some of the pitfalls that I have fallen into over the course of my career so that they can avoid them.
In my mind, a good IT manager needs a few key proficiencies.
1. They must have tech skills. The skills do not necessarily need to be current, but they need the fundamentals. They need to have successfully implemented projects across all the layers of the stack, from the physical, through the network, up into the OS and application layers. They have to have developed these skills in the trenches where they were facing deadlines and user expectations.
2. They must have business acumen. This is not always easy to develop. At the very least, they have to understand where IT fits within the organization that they work for. They have to understand and be able to make the case for why the business needs to continue spending money on IT. If they cannot do this, they will never be an effective part of the organization and will constantly be undermined by others who do not understand the importance of IT to the organization.
3. They must have people skills. As I have been finding out, not everyone you work with is a rock star. The same goes for employees. Some will be self starters who will do a great job. Others need a lot of mentoring and might have a crappy attitude. A manager needs to be able to assess people's strengthens and weaknesses, assign tasks accordingly, and come up with ways to retain the rock star employees, while also giving the mediocre employees a path to improve their skills and personal value.
Nothing is going to happen if he is related to someone in upper management, or just really good friends with them. It's like the demotivator, "Neoptism - We promote family values here - almost as often as we promote family members." Or close friends of the family.
Beware of the Redittor who loans you a Sharpie.
You've my complete sympathy: my colleagues and I have been in just that situation
Find the incompetent manager a new job somewhere else, where _they_ will be happier, and look for personnel who will improve the department's and company's effectiveness. That's often someone in-house, or a different team than is currently there. And unless you've established really well that the manager is not only ineffective due to outside reasons, but incompetent in general, don't bother calling them incompetent. If you can, be open with them. If not, be prepared to leave at high speed when your task is complete, because you won't want to be responsible for the political mess when a new manager costs more for jobs that used to be estimated as costing much less.
Letting the old manager out with some of their pride intact lets them clean up documentation and political messes on their way out, rather than jolting everyone with a complete turnover in dead rush. And the manager may be much more competent in a more detailed, more procedural, or even in a less detailed and more goal oriented environment. Mismatches happen all the time: my colleagues and I often get to clean up after things break down, so it can be educational to be part of the clean up.
How is the poster competent to review the IT Manager? You are evaluating a medium sized business, but need to ask a Slashdot forum how to do your job?
What matters is aligning technological solutions to the business needs. Business logic first.
-- Jimtown Kelly
I've been asked to do something as part of my job, have no idea how to do it, can you help me?
Sounds to me like the dimwit submitter is just as incompetent at doing what he's been asked to do as the IT manager.
Which given that and the presupposed IT manager's incompetence suggests its actually the CEO that is the issue at the company.
B players hire C players.
This is the correct answer.
The IT manager may indeed be incompetent, but the consultant(submitter) hired to evaluate him is also incompetent. It does indeed seem that whomever hired them both is the real issue.
That that are breathing. IT Managers, by definition, are incompetent.
Ask Slashdot: How Do You Prove an IT Manager Is Incompetent?
Easy, if he has root access to everything and reveals your classified secrets. Well at least I'm sure those BAH managers are thinking that.
If said IT Manager you're being paid to come up with a good reason to fire is a heterosexual male, 18-40 years of age, they would have walked his ass out the door by now.
Looks like you're sizing up an IT manager who is one or more of the following:
* Race other than Caucasian
* Gender other than male
* Sexual preference other than heterosexual
* Some sort of statutory protection (i.e., union contract, employment contract, public sector civil servant, right to work laws, etc...)
* Age older than 40
* A beneficiary of nepotism
* Something else can turn a simple termination into a legal mess
My last IT Director position, my predecessor was just that - 60 yr old guy, long-time employee with a contract, and shareholder (privately held corporation) - so they couldn't just toss him out the door. The board of directors brought in a "bad cop" consultant to make the recommendation of how to clean house at the C-level down to some select directors. Of course I walked into a complete and total clusterfuck and left 8 months later. The company folded in less than a year.
Moral of the story is the company that retained you may have some serious structural issues that goes beyond the IT department. Most states are employment at will and can freely fire anyone they want for any reason they want (or no reason at all) so long as it doesn't violate state/federal discrimination laws.
Said it on here before, will say it again. Most IT managers either 1. come from a non-technical background and have management degrees, but know nothing about IT, which makes them make bad IT decisions, or 2. they come from a technical background and have no idea how to manage people.
But, I'm also wary of what you said with "... why their IT group is ineffective, loathed by all other departments, and runs at roughly twice the budget of what the CFO has deemed appropriate for the company's size and industry." I was in a network engineering team which had 5 people, was supposed to expand to 8 people, but due to higher up managers deciding that we should have been able to do the job with less people and less money, we got cut back to 2 people. So, CFO's don't nec. understand how much IT departments should cost. Last place I was at they made an assumption that cutting the workforce in half would mean half the IT people, but as was pointed out to them, we still had the same number of systems running, same number of servers etc, but half the workforce might mean half the IT helpdesk, but the rest of the IT people (one Network guy, one server guy etc) would still be needed.
IT Managers do often need to be IT savy too, in spite of some comments above (which says they only need to know how to manage). Example I experienced, the System Architect ordered a new Sun Box one year all spec'ed out for it to do one thing. The manager above him refused to sign the paperwork for it as he 'didn't want to make a mistake' and as such the paperwork sat there for a year. In the meantime, other managers decided to start adding systems to the box that it wasn't spec'ed out / equipped to take, and the manager agreed to let them put their systems on the box ... result, by the time the paperwork was signed and the Sun box received it was under spec'ed for all the systems it was now going to be having placed on it, and the managers couldn't understand why it ran so slow. Another problem, a couple of the guys who should never have been given root access convinced some IT managers that they needed root access to the Unix boxes. As a result the managers kept ordering us (I was in the System Admin team at the time), to hand over the root password every time we changed it to two guys who had no need for it. An IT manager who knew their security wouldn't have allowed it to happen.
To answer your question as to how to prove the IT manager is incompetent? Just go over past decisions by first looking at what was requested, then working out what was a reasonable solution and then review it with the solution that was brought to the table by the manager. This might give a good indication as to whether they are incompetent or the CFO is incorrect in their estimation. Also, as per previous example, find out who has and needs the root / admin passwords to systems and who has them (and any other 'baffled by bullstuff' that might have occurred with the manager).
Last place I was at, the IT manager thought having no passwords on peoples systems for a cut over to a new network (moving off our clients network onto our own), was a good idea as the people could just come in and log on with their username. When I protested she yelled at me and told me I should be locked up by police as I was a security issue as she claimed I knew everyones passwords (which was because I issue people passwords when they first start and set it up so that they have to change them immediately when they log in. So anyone with IT knowledge would know I didn't know everyones passwords).
I didn't last long enough to be there for the cut over to the new network, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did the cut over and there are accounts sitting there with no passwords on from people who left around the time of the cut over. I have secret hopes that someone hacks them to show them what idiots they are.
The level of competency is irrelevant since pursuing proof one way or the other is both academic, takes more time than a successful business can afford and is still subject to litigation. The answer is in the first sentence of the article: measurable benchmarks. The CFO needs to set goals and minimally acceptable limits. If there's no clearly obvious reason for costs to be double the industry's -- e.g. CIO must contract services from business owner's incompetent nephew's firm -- then fire the CIO. If he or she beats benchmarks who cares if they're lucky or good? And in the case of my example case, the CIO should have the sense to get out; maybe that's the test of competence.
Please can have joe_dragon to post in the English so it can soon be understood please?
The key is that this needs to be systemic policy. If the manager is also graded on his ability to "level up" their subordinates, then it is suddenly in *their* best interest, too.
At Amazon, it's called "Hire and Develop the Best", and everyone is graded against it. For people managers it is obvious - your hiring choices need to be good, and you need to make a good effort to develop your team members. For worker types, it's more about mentoring junior staff.
http://www.amazon.com/Values-Careers-Homepage/b?ie=UTF8&node=239365011
It's not just a talking point - everyone really is graded on each of those skills every year.
Medicare name correction cannot be fixed after 2 and a half years. See blog at: http://medicareharderror.blogspot.com/ #healthcare