IT Manager's Handbook: Getting Your New Job Done (9 page)

The first thing you need to do is make sure that you fully understand what the problem is, what the implications are, and the impact of the various alternatives. Those who bring the problem to you may provide some options, and you may have some of your own. You may want to run the issue by other people on your team to see if they have a different perspective.

Depending on what’s involved, you may want to alert key people outside of IT, either to make them aware of the situation (such as the users) or to involve them in the resolution (such as the head of Accounting in the example given earlier).

Sometimes, the decision-making process is easier if you think about having to explain/defend the worst-case scenarios for each alternative—if it should happen. For example:

•
Your database server crashed and it’s taken seven hours to restore. To be certain that the restored database is 100 percent functional, you should run an integrity check utility, but that will take another three hours. Do you run the integrity check and sentence the users to another three hours of downtime or just hope for the best and bring the database online as soon as it’s restored?

•
If you don’t run the integrity check, you risk the database being down for an additional 10 hours (seven hours to restore again and three hours to run the integrity check you decided against the first time). If you do run the integrity check, you have to explain why you decided against bringing it online as soon as possible.

•
Many people might be willing to take the risk by rolling the dice and not running the integrity check, especially if they have reason to believe it may prove to be unnecessary. However, many of those people will also change their mind when asked if they are ready to explain their decision to senior management if they end up being wrong.

You want to appear confident and calm as you approach key decisions. These traits are important because they are contagious. If others see you keeping your cool, they’ll probably do the same.

1.8 Two IT Departments—What Happens If Your Company Merges with Another?

Mergers and acquisitions are pretty common events in the business sector. They come in all shapes and sizes from mutually agreed upon merger plans to hostile takeover scenarios.

Any sort of organization merger or acquisition can have an enormous impact on the IT department, and you as its manager. Until it is complete, there are two IT teams—each with its own processes, standards, vendors, technologies, and culture.

With luck, your company has included you in the high-level planning for the merger. This lets you, as the IT Manager, learn about the other company’s IT department. You’ll then be able to report to your management and advise them as to what type of effort might be involved to join two teams, systems, and environments into one.

From an IT perspective, there are generally three ways to go about merging another company’s IT environment. The path you choose may depend on your company’s management style (e.g., centralized vs. decentralized), available resources, economic and market conditions, timetables, regulatory issues, and so on.

1.
Brute force.
This amounts to rebuilding everything at one company that isn’t compatible with the other. This approach usually results in a shock to the system of the acquired company and its IT department. It’s pretty painful, but is often the fastest way of getting the two companies integrated and operating as one. Usually, the first technology addressed is e-mail, followed by business applications, user support, operations, OS and database platforms, and networks. This process also includes evaluating procedures and vendors. The brute-force approach won’t be successful unless the appropriate authority and mandate from senior management are in place to see it through, along with the necessary budget and staffing resources. Expect a bumpy ride, culture clashes, and some staff turnover.

2.
Leave them alone.
The opposite extreme would be to just leave the other company as is. Your company may have a culture of decentralization or divisional autonomy that supports this kind of posture, or perhaps your company bought this other organization because they are lean, fast-paced, and profitable and may not want to tamper with that success. In fact, your management may hope that the parent becomes more like the adopted child, and not vice versa. In a case like this you may not need to do much more than add the acquired company’s addresses into your e-mail system and establish some basic connectivity. Regardless, make sure you contact the other company’s IT Manager to establish and maintain a relationship. Share with her information about resources your organization may have (e.g., staff expertise, volume purchase agreements) that she may want to take advantage of. The more you share with her, the more she’s likely to share with you.

3.
Phased integration.
This is the obvious compromise path. In a case like this, you work with the IT Manager of the other company to set future milestone
project manager
targets, each of which brings you closer to full integration. Depending on the circumstances of the two companies, they may set common (and integrated) goals, but take different paths to get there.

No matter what the situation, it’s vital to remember that what may have been the right choices for one of the companies in the past may not be the right choices for the unified organization. Equally important is that just because the acquired company is in the subordinate position doesn’t mean they have nothing to offer—each can learn from the other. An emotional attachment to a technology or product limits your perspective and can backfire. At times like this, those who can demonstrate an ability to adapt to change will be the most successful.

1.9 Further References

Websites

careerplanning.about.com/cs/firstjob/a/new_job.htm
. [first-day tips from about.com].

www.amanet.org/index.htm
. [American Management Association].

www.asktheheadhunter.com/hastartjob.htm
. [tips from a headhunter about starting a job on the right foot].

www.bls.gov/oco
. [Occupational Outlook Handbook, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor].

www.kornferryinstitute.com/files/pdf1/KFceo_whtppr_jan30.pdf
. [survey about senior management terminations].

www.managementhelp.org
. [library of resources for managers].

www.networkworld.com/news/2010/061010-job-growth-salaries.html
. [article on IT job growth].

www.techamerica.org
. [IT industry association].

Books and Articles

Bradt GB, Check JA, Pedraza JE, (2009).
The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, and Get Immediate Results
. Wiley.

Daft RL, (2011).
Management
. South-Western College Pub.

Grimme D, Grimme S, (2008).
The New Manager’s Tool Kit: 21 Things You Need to Know to Hit the Ground Running
. AMACOM.

Kotter JP, (1990).
A Force for Change
. Free Press.

Labadie R, (2007).
Hi! I’m Your New Manager! You’re New—They’re Not! So What Happens Now?
. AuthorHouse.

Murray A, (2010).
The Wall Street Journal Essential Guide to Management: Lasting Lessons from the Best Leadership Minds of Our Time
. Harper Books.

Pettibone T, (2009). The first 100 Days on the Job.
Baseline Magazine
. [March].

Pratt MK, (2008). IT Careers: 5 Tips for Charting Your 100 Day Plan.
Computerworld
. [October 28].

Tynan K, (2010).
Survive Your Promotion! The 90 Day Success Plan for New Managers
. Personal Focus Press.

Weinstein M, (2011). Mixing Business and IT.
CIO Insight Magazine
. [May/June].

Winters GC, (2010). What Your Boss Never Told You: The Quick Start Guide for New Managers.
CreateSpace
.

Zenger J, (2010).
The Complete New Manager
. McGraw-Hill.

Chapter 2

Managing Your IT Team

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants them to do, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

Teddy Roosevelt

Chapter table of contents

2.1
Keeping Employees Focused

2.2
Employee Training

2.3
Employee Performance

2.4
Generational Issues at Work

2.5
Further References

Even with the advanced functionality available in today’s hardware and software, the human factor is still the biggest influence on how effectively technology is used in your environment. The members of your IT team are the ones who will select, implement, configure, monitor, and manage the technology in your corporation. The technologies in place are only as good as the people using them—that applies to both the end-users and the IT team.

The technology products in your environment behave in a fairly predictable manner, but people oftentimes don’t. Managing a staff is an art, not a science.

The importance of managing a team can’t be emphasized enough:

•
Become a great manager and you’ve found a career path and skill that will serve you well for the rest of your life—both in and out of the workplace.

•
Fail to manage well and you may find that your potential growth with the organization is limited at best.

•
Become good at it, and it becomes your most valuable skill, and your staff and department become a critical component and vital asset of the organization.

•
Without good staff management skills, you’ll see your department’s goals and objectives become an uphill battle, and you and your team’s value to the organization will be questioned.

2.1 Keeping Employees Focused

IT Managers must set clear priorities, explain the company and department mission, and communicate often with their team. Throughout this book, specific techniques are detailed to provide you with methods to accomplish these goals.

Establish Priorities

One of the most important, but often unnoticed, functions of a manager is to set priorities; these can include actions such as allocating staffing and funding to various projects, provisioning of technical resources (such as hardware), setting of deadlines, and so on. Employees who spend months working on a project often wonder what exactly it is that their manager does. In truth, the manager is doing one of the most important parts of his job by deciding
which
projects get worked on,
when
they need to start and finish, and
what
resources are assigned to them. A manager’s real worth is in his ability to set goals and objectives, set priorities, make decisions, and manage and motivate the team to achieve them.

Setting goals and priorities means managing your staff and your team so that their work reflects, as close as possible, your own priorities. Those priorities should, in turn, reflect those of the organization. (See the section
“Company Mission, Vision, and Values”
on
page 34
in this chapter about the company’s mission, as well as in
Chapter 1
,
The Role of an IT Manager
, the section
“Developing an IT Strategy”
on
page 10
.) A manager’s merit is found in his staff’s work. Of course, your decisions and priorities may be totally off-base or they may be 100 percent on target. But if you fail to manage your staff well, the quality of your priorities will not matter: Your goals and objectives will never be achieved anyway.

Communicate with Your Team

First and foremost, communicate your vision for the department to your staff. They should understand both where you want the department to go and the plans you have for getting there. Both are important. You don’t want to be the manager who makes the trains run on time, but doesn’t know what to put in the freight cars. Similarly, you don’t want to be the manager who talks on and on about the wonders of train travel but never gets the tracks put down.