J.Ello Sets the Geek>Corporate Record Straight
“What matters are the applications.” ~ Alan Cox
There’s a fantastic piece by Jeff Ello on computerworld.com being circulated around regarding how management within the average corporate structure can often mismanage their IT. It really should be required reading for anyone who manages creative tech personnel. Of course making management read something and making them comprehend are two different beasts.
The entire five page article is well worth the read (come on, there’s always room for j.ello). But I’ll provide some of my favorite excerpts for those of you who, like me, often succub to the MTV generation attention disorder.
From “Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks”:
“Few people notice this, but for IT groups respect is the currency of the realm. IT pros do not squander this currency. Those whom they do not believe are worthy of their respect might instead be treated to professional courtesy, a friendly demeanor or the acceptance of authority. Gaining respect is not a matter of being the boss and has nothing to do with being likeable or sociable; whether you talk, eat or smell right; or any measure that isn’t directly related to the work. The amount of respect an IT pro pays someone is a measure of how tolerable that person is when it comes to getting things done, including the elegance and practicality of his solutions and suggestions. IT pros always and without fail, quietly self-organize around those who make the work easier, while shunning those who make the work harder, independent of the organizational chart.”
***
“I think every good IT pro on the planet idolizes Dr. House (minus the addictions).
While everyone would like to work for a nice person who is always right, IT pros will prefer a jerk who is always right over a nice person who is always wrong. Wrong creates unnecessary work, impossible situations and major failures. Wrong is evil, and it must be defeated. Capacity for technical reasoning trumps all other professional factors, period.
Foundational (bottom-up) respect is not only the largest single determining factor in the success of an IT team, but the most ignored.”
***
“IT pros are sensitive to logic — that’s what you pay them for. When things don’t add up, they are prone to express their opinions on the matter, and the level of response will be proportional to the absurdity of the event. The more things that occur that make no sense, the more cynical IT pros will become. Standard organizational politics often run afoul of this, so IT pros can come to be seen as whiny or as having a victim mentality. Presuming this is a trait that must be disciplined out of them is a huge management mistake. IT pros complain primarily about logic, and primarily to people they respect. If you are dismissive of complaints, fail to recognize an illogical event or behave in deceptive ways, IT pros will likely stop complaining to you. You might mistake this as a behavioral improvement, when it’s actually a show of disrespect. It means you are no longer worth talking to, which leads to insubordination.”
***
“Good IT pros are not anti-bureaucracy, as many observers think. They are anti-stupidity.”
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“What executives often fail to recognize is that every decision made that impacts IT is a technical decision. Not just some of the decisions, and not just the details of the decision, but every decision, bar none.”
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“The primary task of any IT group is to teach people how to work. That’s may sound authoritarian, but it’s not. IT’s job at the most fundamental level is to build, maintain and improve frameworks within which to accomplish tasks. You may not view a Web server as a framework to accomplish tasks, but it does automate the processes of advertising, sales, informing and entertaining, all of which would otherwise be done in other ways. IT groups literally teach and reteach the world how to work. That’s the job.”
***
“Who decides if a doctor is a doctor? Other doctors! So, if your IT group isn’t at the table for the hiring process of their bosses and peers, this already does a disservice to the process.”
***
“An over-structured, micro-managing, technically deficient runt, no matter how polished, who’s thrown into the mix for the sake of management will get a response from the professional IT group that’s similar to anyone’s response to a five-year-old tugging his pants leg.”
I”ve worked either in, or closely with, IT my entire career, so it’s with some weight of authority I say, this dude gets it. Sure, he makes some sweeping generalizations that don’t always apply, but on the grand scale, he gets how IT people work and think, and how people outside IT need to deal with IT.
The one place where he misses the mark is with the credit whoring thing, where he misses the whole reason for the behavior. The point he misses there is that, when IT work is done to absolute perfection, IT is invisible. Few other jobs (aside from utility works) are completely invisible when they do perfect work, so IT teams have to use any and every chance to get credit for what they do. They have to make damn fucking sure people know about it when they make your job easier or prevent disaster. Users just expect a system that’s infinitely fast, infinitely reliable, and effortless to use; when IT does something to move you toward that goal, they need to wave a flag, otherwise you’ll simply say “yeah but that’s how it’s supposed to be, why should they get credit for things working?”
But that’s a nit; it’s a great piece, and should be required reading for every non-IT manager in tech.
Commented by Karl Elvis on September 14, 2009 at 11:34 AM