IT Staff Motivation and Development

Copyright © November 2001 All rights reserved MDE Enterprises

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IT Staff Motivation and Development

MD

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Introduction The techniques and insight in all the publications of The IT Manager Development Series have been part of how I’ve managed IT organizations for many years. Results will vary by individual interpretation and implementation of the tools and concepts discussed. Motivating an IT staff can be difficult. They are a unique group of people that require more than most. The information in IT Staff Motivation and Development contains insight from my years of experience in managing and leading IT organizations. Working with people and helping them grow is possibly the most rewarding of all the skill sets needed to be an effective IT Manager. It can also be one of the most challenging at times. Every individual is different and has a unique set of needs. This publication strives to help you discover those individual needs and also presents topics that will help you motivate your team. Two tools are used to enhance the material: Sidebar: an example or additional information provided to clarify a point. Personal Note: a personal experience or “war story” used to reinforce a point or concept. Managing organizations at a high level is serious business, but having fun along the way is half the battle. I hope you find the material helpful in your quest and I welcome your feedback. You may contact me at [email protected]. The IT Management Development Series includes the following titles: IT Management-101 Developing an IT Business Plan Building a Successful IT Organization Building a Strategic IT Plan IT Project Management Acquisition - IT Due Diligence IT Staff Motivation and Development Acquisition - IT Assimilations Technology Asset Management What to Look For in a CIO To learn more or to view Table of Contents and see excerpts of a publication, log onto www.mde.net/cio . MDE Enterprises will provide one to three-day seminars in major cities throughout the US. For more information, go to www.mde.net/manageIT for schedules and registration information. Information contained within this publication may not be copied or distributed in any form without the express written consent of MDE Enterprises. Mike Sisco


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IT Staff Motivation and Development Table of Contents

Introduction 2 I. Have You Assessed Your Staff ? 4 II. What Motivates Them ? 8 A. Individually 9 B. Teams or sub-units 9 III. Setting Goals and Objectives - The Vision 11

A. IT Organization 12 B. IT Departments 13 C. IT Sub-Units or Teams 14 D. IT Staff 14

IV. Quantifying Projects - The Road Map 16 V. Identifying Individual Focus 20 VI. Tap Into the Leaders of Your Organization 31 VII. Take Advantage of Strengths and Develop Strength and Depth 33 VIII. Empowerment is KEY !! 34 IX. Always Reinforce TEAM 36 X. Share Victories and Defeats 39 XI. Appreciate Their Work 41 XII. Have Fun 43 XIII. Reward Desired Behavior 44 XIV. Reward Accomplishments 46 XV. Communication is a Two-Way Street 47 XVI. Always Have an Open Door 48 XVII.Motivating in a “Down Economy” 49 Summary 51 APPENDIX: A. Employee Skills and Experience Matrix 52 B. Education & Training Needs 53 C. Career Planning Template 54


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I. Have You Assessed Your Staff ?

How long has it been since you took a long hard look at your staff and assessed what you have ? Sure, you are probably saying, “I assess them every day.”. That’s not what I mean. Ask yourself, “Have I ever really stopped to take a close, introspective look at my team and to analyze their individual strengths, weaknesses, desires, goals, and needs ?” All too often we forget what it was like to be one of the technical staff, one of the troops so to speak. That’s especially true for those that have been in a management role for a long time. Do you remember how much fun and rewarding it was in being part of a strong technology organization ? You were learning every day, it was a great challenge, and you felt as though you were making a great contribution. Strong motivators, don’t you think ? It’s also possible that you have never actually experienced the gratification of being a part of an excellent team or organization. If you haven’t, pay close attention because the material in this publication will share many of those feelings and how they motivate a staff. Feeling a part of something bigger than yourself is very gratifying. Feeling good about yourself is an essential part of staying motivated. My sense has always been that people are usually motivated or not on their own accord. There are things that a manager can do to create an environment conducive to high productivity and that reinforces one’s self motivation, but I do not believe you actually motivate a person. It is my firm belief that some people will always be motivated by what they do and others simply are not. If that’s the case, why write a book to discuss motivating others ? Well, it’s like this, “Motivated people need an environment that reinforces their motivation and creates opportunities to succeed.” That’s where the IT Manager comes in. He must facilitate motivation. So, if my theory is correct (by the way, many others far more knowledgeable in this area than me believe this theory as well), there are essentially two types of people:

- those who are self-motivated - those who are not

Enough with the theory already. The IT Manager Development Series is not based on theory. It is based upon actual experiences as an IT Manager of many years. In reality, every individual has some motivational aspects within them; it simply varies by individual. The role of the IT Manager is to find out how to pull it out of the person so that the individual can achieve maximum success for the team. Ultimately, the individual has to play the part. You can only coach and direct, you can’t actually do the work. Let’s go back to assessing your staff. If you have not taken the time to take a close look at each individual, you are short changing the employee, the team, the company, and yourself. WOW, that’s a pretty heavy load to carry ! Sorry, but it’s true.


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Sure, it is ultimately up to the employee to perform but the manager must provide the incentives and create the environment that work toward high achievement for each individual. As we said, every individual is different. Isn’t that why we call them individuals ? Determining motivators for each individual is not terribly difficult, but it will take time and effort. Trust me, it will be worth the effort when you achieve greater results. How do we start to assess an individual in terms of motivation ? My recommendation is that you should combine motivational factors (non-technical skill) with technical capability factors (technical skill). This is especially true for IT resources. Part of technical resource motivations usually have something to do with technical skill and capability. Every person is more motivated when he believes he knows how to do the job well and when positive results are achieved.

Winners are motivated !!

Yes, winners are truly motivated. “It’s easy to be motivated when you are winning.”, you say. To an extent that’s true but it’s hard work to be a winner. Some people don’t like to work hard and are actually motivated to avoid doing what it takes to win. Let’s put it another way. Lee Trevino, one of the great golfers of our time once said something to the effect, “The more I practice the luckier I get, , ,”. Read between the lines and it is apparent that Lee attributed his “luck” to hard work. Winning is an environment that helps motivate others. Rule number one is to identify ways for each member of your team to win. We have all heard the term “win-win”. It’s a great concept to keep in the back of your mind always. For you to win as the manager of an IT organization, it requires your employees to have successes. When they win, you win. Take it a step further and add the client. Before you win, your employees must succeed in helping your client win. Winning is great. We are all here to succeed and to win. Creating an environment that creates successes and expectations that the team will succeed is a vital part of developing a highly motivated staff. In many cases, your staff wants to win, but they may not know how to win. Examples of that might include the following:

- They don’t know how to manage client expectations. - They don’t realize how to provide high levels of client service. - They don’t understand the value of communicating effectively. - and on and on.

Based upon experience of working with thousands of IT resources, I would venture to say that over half had never been part of a quality IT organization that truly provides excellent client service and is viewed as being part of a winning organization.


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Personal Note: I was very lucky. Some of my early training was with a very strong branch of IBM that understood the value of client service, following up on commitments, managing projects effectively, etc. It was also a group that had great cameraderie and a sense of teamwork that reinforced individual as well as the organization’s success. Having mentors that you can learn from and emulate increases your ability to succeed. I have been very fortunate in many parts of my career to have excellent mentors who have helped me, often when they did not even realize it. Every turn in my career has led to a new level of success. Not that I haven’t had my challenges, I certainly have had my share. But the important thing is that with every new company or venture comes new opportunities. Always keep your eyes and mind open to what happens around you, it may become invaluable later in life. Possibly the most valuable lesson I learned early in my career is that you have to create an environment that recognizes the individual and one that helps create success. No one wants to be on a losing team whether they are highly motivated or not. Create an environment that consistently loses or fails and I’ll show you an environment that has very few, if any quality people. Good people will not stay in a losing environment for long. Since we are all different, you must understand each individual’s motivations if you are to help him to achieve his full potential. Touch your employees’ motivators positively and you are on your way to helping them develop and mature into much stronger and capable employees. Do these things well and it creates an environment that essentially feeds itself. The more they are motivated, the more they focus on areas you set up to develop their skills, which, in turn, motivates them even more. If you are lucky to inherit an organization with excellent skill and potential, great. The job will be much easier because you have a lot to start working with. On the other hand, if you inherit an organization that lacks the skills needed for the responsibility it has, that’s harder. Either way, as the manager you are empowered to develop greatness and you most certainly can with either type of group. The only issue is that the starting point is different. What makes members of your staff “tick” ? If you don’t know, now is the time to start finding out. People work for companies for primarily one reason – to make money to pay for food, shelter, and other items that are important to them. Individual needs are different depending upon the person’s background, interests, or personality. There are also several levels that make up a person’s needs as it relates to their employment. Those levels include:

- Basic needs - Emotional needs - Individual wants - Career wants


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You will notice that I listed “needs” versus “wants”. Separating wants from needs is key to understanding an individual and finding ways that help motivate and develop his or her skill. Let’s break them down a bit.

1. Basic Needs - these include generating income to pay for food and shelter and other basic necessities of life. With individuals, this will be different. For example, in the United States it is almost a necessity to own a car, but not totally. Some individuals consider owning a car as a basic necessity while others are willing to manage their lives using public transportation services. Basic needs generally include:

- Food - Shelter - Transportation

2. Emotional Needs - some people need plenty of opportunity for socialization while

others do not. Emotional needs might include things like: - Socialization - Security - Flexibility - Ability to learn

3. Individual Wants - this includes anything that someone wants to obtain or to

achieve. In most cases, it will be something that is optional, but it can be a very strong motivator. Individual wants include things like:

- New car - A bonus or reward - Special vacation - Time off

4. Career Wants - most of us want to achieve more in our career. That is especially true

when we are younger and are trying to prove ourselves, to make more money, etc. Career Wants include items such as:

- Position or title - Responsibility - Income level - Knowledge level

Each of these areas are motivators that can be used to help others achieve their goals. If you understand what drives an individual employee you have the first part of what you need to orchestrate his growth and to improve his contribution to your team. Always remember, the purpose of finding ways to motivate and to develop your people is so that they can achieve more individually and as a team. The result is an organization that accomplishes more. That’s why we become managers.


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II. What Motivates Them ?

We have mentioned several times that individuals have very different needs and wants. Part of our management success will depend upon our ability to discover these individual differences to facilitate individual improvements. We all know that the reason there are so many flavors of ice cream is because of individual taste and preference. Once you discover the right flavor of ice cream to serve each of your employees you are on your way. How do you determine what motivates an individual or what is important for them ? One way, and don’t laugh at this, is to ask the person. Some people can tell you almost immediately. Others won’t really know when you ask this question. You may even have to help an individual develop his or her answer. When you analyze this, break it down into two parts: individual motivations and needs versus team needs. One of the best ways to look at this is to look at a professional sports team such as baseball. A baseball team is actually made up of many different parts just as a technical organization has different components in a company. Sidebar: In baseball, there are several parts to the team, each having different needs and motivators that require different stimulus for enhancing development and therefore capability. A baseball team has these components and more:

- Individual player - Pitching

- Starters - Relievers - Closers

- Catching - Infield - Outfield - Hitting - Coaches - Trainers - Bat Boys - Team administration - Management

When you get into the intricacies of the team you discover many more elements and layers. The point to all of this is that to develop the full potential and to motivate your third baseman takes a different approach than to develop your star pitcher. There will be some issues that both will respond to, but the pitcher needs a very different skill of coaching than the third baseman.


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The same is true in your technology organization. A support desk specialist may have many similarities to your best programmer. There will be major differences as well. Everything comes into play as you develop a strategy to motivate and to improve skills. A. Individually Everyone has a set of motivators and things that urge them on to do more. The key is to understand what is important to an individual. Broad categories that are typical elements that are important to individuals include:

1. Security 2. Money 3. Job satisfaction 4. Title or position 5. Flexibility 6. Continued education and learning opportunities 7. Part of a winning team or company 8. Working for strong management 9. Positive work environment 10. Being needed 11. Recognition

As mentioned before, one of the best ways to determine what is important to a person is to ask them. If they aren’t sure, talk through the list above to help them develop their thoughts. As the question, “What would make you want to jump out of bed in the morning and rush to get to work every day ?” The answer to that question can be many different things, but it will tell you quite a bit about your employee’s motivations. Once you know what the motivator is you can organize events that promote them. You can also develop a plan that takes advantage of that individual’s motivators to help develop his/her skills and capabilities. Be sure to get as specific of an answer with each individual as you can. The more you truly understand the person’s motivators the better you will be positioned to promote the right issues as long as they are appropriate issues to promote. B. Teams or sub-units Teams are like individuals. Teams have personalities, unique desires and needs the same as individuals. You need to understand the dynamics of each of your teams just as you need to understand the individuals of the team. To motivate and to develop a small group or team of your technology organization you must have a clear picture of the things that motivate that unit and the things that are important to help develop that part of the overall technology team. Motivating and developing the support programming team will definitely be different than motivating and developing the network infrastructure group. It might also be different from motivating and developing the new development programming group even though they both have very similar technical skills.


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Sidebar: Take a look at the baseball team again. Motivating starting pitchers and improving their pitching skills requires little to no coaching in hitting. Their contribution to the team is understood to be something very different than being able to hit the baseball well. They spend very little time trying to develop these skills and are not really motivated by the possibilities of being great hitters. For this reason, a baseball team has different coaches, even multiple levels of coaches for each segment of the game. There are coaches for pitchers, for relief pitchers, hitting coaches, base running coaches, even a dugout coach to manage the needs of the team. Over all of this is the Manager, or CIO as related to a technology organization. Each coach has different skills and focus to help the ball club maintain a positive approach to the business of baseball as well as to continually improve the skills necessary to win games. The same issues apply to managing technology organizations. The CIO must understand dynamics of each of the sub-groups of the technology team. He will also need additional coaches (managers) that specialize in specific areas of technology to motivate and develop their piece of the organization. The baseball manager or the company CIO has to pull all the parts of the team together in a means that leads to team success. In small companies the CIO will have a more direct relationship with each of the functional groups of the technology organization. Regardless of the situation, it is important that management knows the dynamics of the team and understands what motivates it as well as how to develop the skills of the team in order to achieve more. Teams or sub-units within an organization are usually motivated by:

- Successes - Clear vision - Defined plans - Understanding the importance of the group’s mission - Strong management - Defined objectives

Just as you do with individuals, meet with your small sub-groups or teams and talk about dynamics that motivates the group and work with them to determine how you can improve it’s skills in order to accomplish more. Much like the baseball manager looks at his pitching group, you have to determine whether you can improve skills or go find them. Either way, the team has to have success for the IT organization to succeed. If key skills are lacking, the manager must find ways to fill the gaps. When the skills are there, it’s easier to focus on promoting the motivation elements.


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III. Setting Goals and Objectives - The Vision

It is hard to be motivated if you don’t know where you’re headed. Being in the dark is no fun for anyone and you see it quite a bit in both small and large companies. A very powerful motivator is created when the manager defines a vision and sets specific goals and objectives. It’s true !! Setting goals and objectives is needed at multiple levels. For instance, the CIO should ensure written goals are created at all of the following levels:

- IT Organization - Each IT Department within the IT Organization - Teams within an IT Department - Individual Resource

If you can’t write your goals down, then you probably do not have real goals in place. Throughout the IT Manager Development Series you hear me state how difficult it is to hit a target when you do not know what the target is. To line up your sights on a target, you must define what it is as clearly as you possibly can. The clearer you define your target, the higher the odds are of hitting it. I personally like very high odds as an IT Manager. The list of levels shown above is also the priority that a CIO should develop goals for. It is much more difficult to begin at an individual resource level and work your way up. It can be done in that fashion, but as you define the higher organization levels, you will undoubtedly need to return to the individual plan to tweak in order for it to fully support your higher level goals. Keep it simple for yourself and minimize your work requirement by starting at the overall organization level and work your way down. If you are managing an IT department, let’s say the Help Desk, develop your Department mission, goals, and objectives with the overall IT Organization’s goals in mind. If you find yourself in a situation where there are no stated goals for the overall IT Organization, work with your CIO to develop one. Sidebar: Enhance your value to your manager by going about your business that suggest several traits in your management style:

- Managing in a manner that supports overall IT objectives and Company goals - Thinking ahead versus managing only for today - Defining your team’s purpose with specific objectives - Managing with a plan

There are too many managers out there that manage reactively. The reality is that most do. Creating a vision or plan for each level of your responsibility will differentiate you from other manager counterparts not only with managers above you but also with your employees. Planning and creating a vision of where you want to go and creating plans that define the milestones to get there are strong leadership traits. People follow and rally around leaders, not reactors.


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Let’s break each of the four levels down a bit and discuss means of developing goals and objectives for each.

A. IT Organization - The CIO of the company is responsible for creating a vision of the organization to support the company’s objectives. This vision needs to include immediate needs as well as long term strategic projects that help the company achieve it’s goals.

Considerable amount of time is spent on this topic in my Developing a Strategic IT Plan and IT Management-101 publications. The CIO must assess the needs of the business and develop a strategy that syncs up with where the company wants to go. Critical short term problems have to be resolved while the IT organization positions itself to “catch bigger fish”. Planning is key at the CIO position. The plans developed at this level set the stage for all the planning required of the levels below. As discussed in other publications in more detail, the CIO must create a stable base in order to attack strategic projects. Getting infrastructure, business applications, and the organization stabilized takes priority. The entire IT organization and the rest of the company looks to the CIO for direction. An effective way to provide it is to start with small steps that lead to long leaps. For example, try the following:

1. Define your Top 5 Priorities after assessing the situation for 2 weeks 2. Define your 90-Day Objectives after being there one month. 3. After three or four months, define your next 6-month Objectives. 4. Somewhere in this first 9 months, define a 12-18 Month IT Strategy.

Steps one and two, possible even step 3 will include mostly tactical projects or initiatives. The fourth step will need to happen when you have gained enough insight into the company, it’s business challenges and goals, and how IT can support those objectives. In a very complex business, the time to develop a strategic plan will take longer. In a small company, the strategic planning process is usually able to be addressed quicker. The CIO of a large company will have several different functional organizations including infrastructure, help desk, applications support, applications development, and others. As you develop your plans, take the time to identify key objectives that you want out of each organization to support your overall goals. Identifying these major bullets will help your department managers and will bring clarity to others as you communicate your vision. Always remember – no plan has to be set totally in stone. An effective manager observes dynamics and needs of the business and will modify a plan as needed to support those changes. Otherwise, it really isn’t managing.


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Depending upon the maturity of the company and its IT organization, the vision is primarily tactical, strategic, or a mixture of the two. If you find yourself in a totally tactical environment due to where the company happens to be in it’s maturity cycle, be sure to pay close attention to immediate needs. Until you establish stability, you won’t get far by starting strategic initiatives. It will take you longer because you will return to tactical initiatives to create stability. Bottom line is that you must walk before you run. So, what is the point to all of this? Simple, , , by creating your list of targets (objectives), you tell everyone around you what is important to get done in a certain timeframe. You may be challenged. If so, that’s great news because the challenge may redirect your focus to what’s more important for your company. That’s always a good thing. You don’t have to approach delivering your objectives in the four steps that we listed above. Provide your list of objectives in the timeframe and for the appropriate time span into the future that makes sense for your given situation. Just be sure to put a “stake in the ground” and communicate to others (senior managers, employees, department managers, and clients) where you are headed. I can assure you that it will be appreciated and it develops respect for you as an IT manager.

B. IT Department - Hopefully, your CIO has created a vision of where IT needs to go to support your company. If this is not in place, sit down with him or her to get a sense of when it will be available or do your own discovery with the CIO to determine what you think the plans are for the overall IT organization. Once you believe you know, write it down and validate your assumptions with your CIO.

This does a couple of things. First, it tells your CIO that you are going to plan your department’s objectives in a way that supports the overall IT objectives. Assuming the IT objectives are in sync with the Company needs, you are assured that your department plans will be supporting the Company as well. Secondly, it keeps you in step with your CIO. Not every CIO’s vision will be in sync with the company’s needs. There are many CIO’s that develop an IT agenda because they are enamored with technology. It’s great to like technology; I have no issue with that. When the infatuation for technology begins to drive a manager to buy the “new toy” versus finding a practical, economical means of addressing the problem, then it becomes a problem. The manager that has no problem spending the company’s money without creating comparable value and benefits is short-lived. At some point, real value has to be delivered.


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A department vision should follow the same scenario as the CIO follows in setting the entire IT organization’s objectives. There will be short term problems that have to be addressed quickly and long term initiatives that you want to get to in order to provide a much better service or product. At this juncture it is all right, even appropriate, to keep it at a high level. After all, we are still talking about what you plan to do, a rough timeframe, and possibly why you are targeting individual items on your list. We are not yet discussing how we will accomplish each objective, i.e. the real planning process. After you complete your department objectives list, go over it with your CIO or senior manager to validate that you are on target. Fail to do this and you may find yourself going back to your staff and clients and correcting your mistakes. As discussed in the CIO section, you should identify key objectives you want accomplished from each of your sub-teams within your department if you have such an organization. Give your supervisors as much as you can to help them support your business objectives.

C. IT Department Sub-Unit or Team - Most teams or sub-units are built around specific projects. For example, software companies might have multiple software installation teams reporting to an Installation Department Manager.

Project goals have to be established the same as organization goals. The lower the level, the more specific the goals and objectives should be. A team supervisor should have very specific objectives that will spell success for the project. To develop an appropriate set of goals for a team, the manager/supervisor should go through an analysis of defining the deliverables that are required for success. It might be:

- install a software application within a certain period of time - deliver new programming with less than 5% errors - respond to trouble calls within 1 hour; resolve within 4 hours

Define key goals and objectives of what you expect of the team. Ensure you are consistent with and supportive of the IT Department strategy you’re in and the overall IT organization strategy and you are on you way.

D. IT Staff Member - Each staff member should be given measurable objectives that

support the organization objectives they are a part of. One of the best means of accomplishing this is by developing performance plans for each individual. Most managers look at this requirement as a real “pain in the neck”. It absolutely can be, but it may also be one of the best employee motivators you have, especially in IT.


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Performance planning sessions and review sessions are real quality times for an employee and manager. It’s what I’ve found over 25 years to be one of the most effective means of directing their efforts and reinforcing our purpose within the company. Keep this in the back of your mind; we will discuss more on performance planning later. In defining an employee’s objectives, it’s important to understand what makes him/her “tick”. Learn what they want to accomplish and where they want to get to in their lives. Creating a list of objectives for an individual should consist of part performance planning and part career planning. Your objectives list for the individual needs to support both aspects. To do this, you need to know what the motivators are of the employee, his career goals, what’s really important to him, and what he will have to accomplish in the job to be successful. It takes time and effort to quantify all of this, but you can be assured that the work will pay off for you. Over time, it becomes easier and more of a natural part of what you do as a manager. Let’s review again a list of what you should include at a high level for each employee’s goals and objectives. Once you have these listed for your employee, you will be prepared to develop a performance plan that is meaningful for the individual. Objectives should include:

- Education/training - Responsibility areas - Levels of performance (productivity and quality) - Client service traits - Specific project successes - IT process adherence


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IV. Quantifying Projects - The Road Map

It doesn’t matter whether you are developing a 30-day objectives list or an 18-month strategic plan, you need to quantify as best as you can the projects that will be addressed to achieve your goals. Doing this step drops down a level below defining the goals and objectives. We start getting a bit more specific. Everyone is looking for the answer. Creating a “road map” that shows the projects, their relationship and dependencies with one another, and the approximate timing does a lot for the manager:

1. Defines your plan 2. Shows project relationships and dependencies 3. Shows a need for coordination 4. Provides company “stakeholders” challenge opportunity which leads to being in sync 5. Creates confidence 6. Rallies staff to the real mission; otherwise they can get sidetracked 7. Creates a sense of commitment 8. Creates an image of a manager that is in charge of his destiny versus reacting

Creating a vision with substance in it that spells out the major projects and initiatives required to accomplish your goals gives people the answer. Failure to do this causes a very different set of perceptions from staff, managers, and clients as shown below:

1. There must not be a plan 2. Unsure of where we are headed 3. Management doesn’t trust us to share their vision with us 4. Management doesn’t respect us enough to share their vision 5. Creates uncertainty 6. Creates a lack of trust in management 7. Creates concern in the individual’s role in their company 8. Give them no direction and they come up with their own

Sidebar: One of the scenes in American President starring Michael Douglas and Michael J. Fox is a scene near the end when Fox addresses his President and says something to the effect, “People will listen to whoever is doing the talking. They are looking for leadership and without it they will drink the sand from anyone that tells them to.” Much of managing others effectively hinges upon your leadership skills. Defining goals, establishing objectives, and developing project milestones into an organized vision is a true leadership trait because it is proactive. It creates an image of a mature manager that thinks through where the organization is and determines in a proactive fashion where they need to be, , , and then goes for it with a plan. What’s the point and how does this relate to motivating and developing an IT staff ?


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Glad you asked ! It has a lot to do with motivating an IT staff actually. IT people are detail oriented and they have an above average need for information. No news or direction is usually perceived negatively by technology resources. Strategic planning and communicating organization direction are attributes that have strong leadership overtones that position you to motivate the staff more effectively in the material we discuss later in this publication. These techniques are also developing your staff to think proactively, to plan, to quantify and document what is to be done, and to communicate plans effectively to others. Your staff watches you as their manager and when they see things work they will actually repeat your approach. Not only is it showing them an appropriate structure to follow, the plans you develop and communicate to them actually provide a “how to” model to follow later in their careers. We do not go into detail in this publication about how to plan effectively. There are other publications that are devoted to this important process. If you are interested in learning more about planning, you will want to review the publication Building a Strategic IT Plan. It details the steps required to develop a strategic vision and plan. IT Management-101 also includes a chapter on planning. If you do not have access to these documents, a sample strategic vision document can also be viewed at www.mde.net/strategy . This document is a 2-page high level plan describing the initiatives and projects required to take a company to a “paperless” billing environment. The second page includes additional key projects that need to be considered for the following year’s capital and operating budgets.


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This plan, or vision was actually used for a company to help senior management understand the aspects of what needed to be done to gain considerable improvements in the company. Going into the meeting there were several objectives to be accomplished:

1. Create awareness of the strategic plan. 2. Show the complexity and size of the challenges ahead. 3. Show the interdependencies of the projects and initiatives and to emphasize the fact

that many projects depended upon others and some were prerequisite to others. 4. Quantify the initiatives that were needed. 5. Gain commitment that these were indeed the appropriate initiatives to be taking. 6. Provide a sense of the costs that were required (not shown on the document). 7. Emphasize the commitment required from various departments to successfully

complete the plan. The vision, or strategic plan pulls it all together at a 30,000 foot level. It makes it easier to discuss with other managers and with employees. By documenting the plan, it also will help you reinforce the concepts that you discuss during your initial meetings. There will be those that won’t recall much of the discussions. Documents such as these help manage their expectations more easily later on. If you want to look at the second page of the plan, go to the web site indicated earlier, www.mde.net/strategy . Creating a high level document of your vision instills a strong sense of confidence in your staff and also in the management team that you work with. Everyone wants to know what the plan is. No one wants to work in an environment where you can’t figure out what the direction is. To a great extent, motivating employees is making the effort to enlighten them on where you are headed. Keeping people ‘out of the dark’ is key.


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V. Identifying Individual Focus

Now we begin to get closer to the staff. If you have assessed the individuals on your team you should have an appreciation for their strengths, challenges, desires, likes, dislikes, and goals. The key question is, “What do they want in life?” People typically work to achieve something they either want or need such as food, home, car, or a really nice stereo system. Everyone has different levels of motivators. By now, hopefully you know what each of your people need and what motivates them to achieve. People do not typically work simply because they like to. You have also spent time to define organization objectives for your area of responsibility and should have listed individual objectives for each member of your staff and major sub-units and departments within the organization.

Let’s review again, , , we know individual staff motivators, we have a perception of where to help them grow, we have a plan, or vision of what needs to be done for the company, , , as the old monkey in the movie Lion King says,

“It is time.” It’s now time to start putting it all together by developing an individual plan. Again, I’m not going to go into detail about how to create a sound performance plan. This is discussed in Building a Successful IT Staff. What you do need to know here is that your individual staff plans should include three components:

1. Performance Plan 2. Education & Training Plan 3. Career Plan

A sound Performance Plan should always include a Training/Education section. Step back a moment before you try to do this for an individual staff member. Your overall organization needs two training and education plans for a period of time, usually a budget year. First, you should define a training plan that fills gaps in expertise and capability of your organization. There are also going to be key positions in your organization where you need bench strength due to the importance of those roles in providing services from your responsible area. It’s important to have the right level of expertise in any IT organization. You need experts and you need a certain capacity, or numbers of staff, to take care of business. Experts can be internal staff members or consultants that you contract with. After you have the expertise in place, you must have enough staff, or consultants, to handle the volume of work that takes place for your specific situation. Your approach to filling the requirements with employees versus consultants has a direct relationship on an organization training plan.


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Once you determine the training needed for the organization, then, , , and only then, , , should you start developing a training plan for an individual staff member. Do a simple task of creating a Skills/Expertise Matrix to visualize where you want the organization’s capabilities to be at the end of the year. We will develop a brief sample to show you what to do. To illustrate, let’s take the IT Infrastructure Organization of a company. An IT Infrastructure Organization typically has network administrators, systems people, telecom capabilities, desktop support and help desk expertise. Your company’s organization may have more or less than what we just described. Begin by developing a list of skill sets and experience needed for the organization and create an existing skills level matrix beside each skill as shown below. For this exercise, we are only providing a sample approach to illustrate our point, not trying to actually develop a comprehensive skills matrix for a typical infrastructure organization.

Skills / Expertise Matrix - Sample Infrastructure Organization

Skill / Expertise Strong Avg Weak Needs NT Administration x Current NT certification WAN Support x Backup depth support E-mail (MS Exchange) x Stronger skills plus depth MS Outlook - desktop x Stronger skills plus depth Desktop & peripheral support

x Need depth, especially printer support

Organization Skills / Expertise Matrix

This is a very simple list. In the real world you would want to expand on this to cover your entire infrastructure requirements including LAN support, telecom, remote access capability, Internet and Intranet support, etc. The point to all of this is that when you develop a current skills and experience matrix similar to the format used above, it begins to show you what you need to do to train and possibly hire in each skill that you have determined important for your business. From this list, you should be able to develop an overall organization training needs list for the coming year. Once you have a training needs list, you can apply those needs to specific employees based upon a couple of criteria. More on this later.


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From the sample skills matrix above, the following training needs can be identified: Training needed Primary Staff Backup Staff

1. NT administrator certification X 2. WAN communications training X 3. E-mail (MS Exchange) X X 4. MS Outlook – Desktop X X 5. Desktop & peripheral support X

Are you beginning to see how the fog begins to dissipate and the training needs start to become very clear ? You can take this to as much detail as you want. For example there may be three or four classes offered for a certain skill like NT Administration. You can list each class underneath the major heading NT Administration Certification and identify if it is needed for your primary resource or for a backup resource. As you develop your organization’s training needs, don’t forget to list the “soft skills” such as client management, project management, change management process, etc. All of your needs are not going to be limited to technical knowledge by any means. Developing a clear organizational plan for training is crucial before you begin identifying the training for individuals. Each staff member’s individual training should be defined in context of what is needed for the team to become stronger. As the team becomes stronger and has successes, the individuals succeed and are positioned for greater things ahead. A significant part of motivating your employees and developing their capabilities has much to do with your own organization and focus. People become more motivated when they see their manager with a plan that improves team capabilities as well as providing them opportunity to learn more so they can contribute more. This is so true of technical people. So, the second part is to develop individual training plans for your staff. There are a couple of thoughts you should have as you step through this process:

1. Take into consideration an individual’s goals and desires. 2. Consider each individual’s career growth and direction. 3. Take care of the team first. 4. Take advantage of individual strengths.

As a manager you will be asking employees what they want to be in a few years. The answer may have nothing to do with that individual’s capabilities or strengths.


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Personal Note: More than once I’ve gotten a response of, “I want to be a manager.” when I’ve asked an employee about where they wanted to be in their career a few years out. In several cases, I knew right away that this would not be the case once the employee understood what it really meant to manage an IT organization. When I get this answer, I always ask a following question of, “Why ?” Another question that follows this one is to ask the employee to describe what managing an IT organization entails. Very quickly you will learn whether the employee has a true appreciation for the role, are they saying it because they think that’s what everyone should aspire for, or are they simply giving an answer. Don’t allow yourself to get pulled into providing training that does not make sense. Let’s take a moment to emphasize this. Your first priority as a manager is to your company and your team. Just because an employee says they want to move into a direction does not mean that you should sign up for it as their manager. Evaluating performance and working diligently to place square pegs in square holes is extremely important. In my career, I have dealt with many situations where I actually directed a person’s focus away from what they were saying and more to where their demonstrated skills and desires had shown. Personal Note: I will give you three personal examples: 1. The first example was a man that found himself in a technically oriented role that required a

level of technical competency and an ability to manage client expectations well. Because of his lack of the technical knowledge, he was always lacking the credibility he needed to manage the client. He had very strong people skills but was not able to be effective without the technical proficiency. I encouraged him to take a lateral move that would help him migrate to a sales role. Today, he is a successful salesman, makes more money, and is much happier than if he had followed the technical career pursuit.

2. The second example dealt with a lady that was a technical writer. She also had excellent sales skills but did not know how to pursue it. She was also not that great at documentation; it just happened to be where she settled in as the company had made changes prior to my joining the company. Today, she sells real estate and does very well.

3. The third example is a young man that truly wanted to become a manager. He had a high energy level and was technically competent. As a senior resource in our Help Desk organization, he was more than disappointed when we hired a manager instead of promoting him as the manager of the group. I spent considerable time with him to help him learn about effective management processes, why you look at certain situations in certain ways, how to identify and manage risk, etc. Ultimately, he got his management shot and has been a very effective IT manager and CIO.

So, keep an open mind and help your employees reach for and achieve their goals, , , but always remember that it is more wrong for you to endorse and promote an individual into a situation that they can’t handle. Managing is always making the right decisions that support the business.


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All right, how do you develop an individual training plan? My recommendation is to develop it by doing the following:

1. List each of your employees on a sheet of paper with blank lines to list their training items.

2. Take your Training Needs List and fill in the training classes you have identified by the appropriate employee names that make sense for that training need.

3. Review other general employee development areas that you think the organization needs for overall improvement and list this by each appropriate employee.

4. Review each employee and identify any additional training that is warranted to support his/her career focus or a capability you wish them to develop that helps your team.

We will discuss taking advantage of the leaders and strength in your team later in this book. I bring it up now to reinforce the notion that your goal is to develop as strong and as self sufficient of a team as you can, , , and as quickly as possible. To do this, you lead with your strength. If you are looking to fill expertise gaps within the organization and it’s a critical area, go with your stronger employees first. You can develop others as backup resources, but make sure you have the strongest players in your most critical technology areas. The same principle goes for placing employees on critical client projects. Size up the client and place the appropriate level of employee on major projects. It will pay dividends by putting strength in front of your tougher challenges. You should now have a training plan for each of your employees. The third part is to develop an individual Performance Plan. Detail information and examples are provided in Building a Successful IT Organization. In this publication, we simply state the need to have individual performance plans that define for the employee what he/she needs to do to attain success in the organization. A solid performance plan should include a minimum of the following major categories:

1. Productivity 2. Quality 3. Technical Knowledge 4. Education & Training 5. Client Service 6. IT Policies and Procedures 7. Communication

We just described a method for developing a training plan that focuses on organization needs as well as individual goals. The same approach will work for you in each of the six disciplines or categories listed above. You should also look at each category and determine if there are training needs in any of them. For example, you may want to develop and deliver a class yourself to all your employees to help them improve their communication skills or project management skills.


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As you develop an individual’s performance plan, keep the following thoughts in mind:

1. Team needs 2. Be as specific as possible 3. Employee career direction 4. Define key responsibilities in the team 5. Employee improvement needed 6. Successful behavior and results

You now have two of the three individual focuses needed for your employees, a performance plan and a training plan that are unique for the employee. You’re making lots of points now and you are well ahead of most of the IT managers in the world today if you have this in place. The last part is to develop a Career Plan with the employee. Most IT managers have never done this. It might sound improbable but it’s true. You should always remember that your employee is usually interested in getting ahead. Normally, that means making more money and to make more money you must usually take on more responsibility. To do an effective job of career planning, it requires you to get to know your employee more. Take the time to sit down with each employee to discuss the future and where they want to be in their career. You might be astonished at some of the feedback. You will also gain their support when they know that you really care about them and are initiating efforts to understand “what makes them tick”. Employees will take extraordinary steps for a manager that cares about their future. One real caution here. Do not pursue these discussions if you are not prepared to follow-up. You will lose more credibility than you had hoped to gain and lose it faster if you do not follow up. You should also avoid this area if you are not sincere about it. Your employee will read through you if you say the words but do not believe them. Personal Note: In a CIO role of a small company, I had what initially seemed to be a tough challenge with one of the employees. She was very suspicious of my abilities and had mentioned to others that she was about to resign. Initially, I also had concerns about her abilities and commitment. After 90 days or so, she was one of my strongest supporters and made the comment to other employees more than once, “Mike is for real. He has done everything he has said he would do.” I don’t know about you, but those are the words that boost my morale and it is the type of legacy that I want to leave after any engagement. Not only was her attitude turned, it had impact on the CEO who also made comments about the significant changes that had occurred with this employee.


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How did I do it ? Very simple, actually. I followed the guides that I write about in this book:

1. I gave her specific responsibilities and eliminated those that she was failing in. Part of the problem and her lack of user credibility stemmed from the point that she had so much responsibility on her there was no way for her to succeed. Balancing this made a huge impact on the user as well as the employee.

2. I had conversations about the future and what was realistic versus not. 3. After seeing her exhibit strong commitment to a client situation (beyond the call of

duty actually), I congratulated her and used this event in conversations to help others understand the type of commitment we were looking for. I also rewarded her with a night on the town. It cost me $70.00.

4. I created a vision for the IT organization that showed everyone where we were headed, the importance the strategy had for the company, and the individual responsibilities of people in the team that would make it happen.

This employee became one of my best recruiters and inside sales people because of her long tenure in the company. One very important point here: Had I not seen the strong commitment to client service I would not have worked with her as much. I look for those people that know what it takes and they decide for themselves they will go the extra mile. I don’t work hard to force people to do that. My view is that can be a waste of your time and ultimately unfair to your team. Developing a career path for an individual on your IT staff can be simple, or rather complex depending upon the situation. It helps if you have an established organizational structure that defines the position levels in the company. If not, you will need to create a structure that will clarify this for you and your employee. An example that might help follows.


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Sidebar: An example of the career path possibilities of a programmer in Programming Support might look similar to the following structure: Your situation will probably look different. Every company will have its own professional position structure. The key is that you need to define where the growth possibilities lie, both for your organization and the individual. The chart shown here was developed to enough extent to illustrate several points that you will encounter in career discussions. Key points that you want to reinforce in career plan discussions are:

1. A decision on the career track does not take place in one day. It will evolve over time. 2. At certain points in a person’s career there will be forks in the road where you need to

make a decision on your career direction. For example, one very real fork in a programmer’s career ultimately becomes a decision as to whether he wants to remain technical or move more toward a less technical position such as management.

3. If you are undecided, try to keep as many doors open as possible. 4. There are no wrong decisions. 5. Certain job positions usually come from specific positions or disciplines. For

example, in the sample the CIO position does not come from the VP of Technology. In this model, the VP of Technology is considered one of the strongest technical resources within the company and has not developed the organizational management skills during his career to become an effective CIO.


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Personal Note: An example in my career was that an IBM Branch Manager, one of the positions sought after, almost always was filled by a previous Marketing Manager and was rarely filled by a Systems Engineer Manager. The thought was that the position needed strong business development leadership skills and that was a major part of a Marketing Manager’s responsibility. It was this reason that my SE Manager directed me to go into Sales so that I would have the option of becoming either a Marketing Manager or an SE Manager. He also knew that I had certain sales skills and could do the job or he would not have encouraged me in that direction. In my case, I discovered that I was not cut out to be a salesman. Rather than looking at the move being a wrong decision, it gave me insight that I might not have today and has helped me in my career as a manager of technology resources.

6. The company has to have a business need to fill a higher position, the employee must be qualified, and he/she would need to be the best candidate for the job.

7. As you move higher, competition for certain roles is more intense and levels of responsibility are much greater. Just because you have attained the credentials does not automatically promote you into the higher position. After all, there is only going to be one CIO for the company.

A blank Career Planning Template is provided in Appendix C for your use.

Steps that you can use to develop a career path for an employee follows below. Use the blank Career Planning Template to document your company’s career path structure. Step 1 Quantify the responsibilities in the employee’s current position. This does not need to be an exhaustive list or long paragraphs of text. List the major responsibilities, experience required, and training/education needed for the role in short bullets. Step 2 Identify the roles/positions that can be achieved directly from the current position. Do the same thing as in Step 1 by listing the key responsibilities, training needed, experience, etc. that qualifies someone for each position that the Programmer could strive for. We will call this the “lateral positions” or the “2nd level” positions. An example of this in the sample chart above is that the Programmer has two options for advancement: a move to a Senior Programmer or to a Business Analyst. As you follow the path in our sample, there are other options (forks in the road) at the Senior Programmer and Programming Manager positions. If the employee wants to become a CIO one day, it’s easy to follow the chart to determine the requirements to position himself for the job. Step 3 Create the continuing promotion roles that are appropriate for this second level. To help an employee the most, you actually want to look beyond the next position after moving from the Programmer position. You actually want them to begin visualizing at least two to three steps beyond where they are today. The reason for helping the employee look at it more strategically is to insure you are helping him advance in a way that will not close certain doors.


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For example, if he is talking potential CIO, you may want to encourage the employee to move toward a management role sooner than later. The development process in management roles will help the advance move faster and prepare him better than if he stays in the very technical path. At this level, the Programmer position, your employee is highly unlikely to be reaching for a CIO position. In fact, it’s sort of like what you may have experienced in your Freshman year of college in trying to decide what you should major in. At this juncture, it’s all right and probably more appropriate to focus on a general career path that allows advancement but keeps your options open. So, in this step, define at least two to three levels of future advancement beyond the position your employee is in today. If you take the time to define the career steps throughout your organization one time, you will be able to use your Career Planning Template over and over. Step 4 Conduct a Career Planning Discussion with your employee. This is a two-way, interactive discussion. Your management role is to help the employee see the possibilities. You also have an opportunity to discuss the requirements for advancement and the fact that there are no guarantees if there is no need for someone to fill a certain position. You will need to get your employee to think about career. Today may not be the day to make decisions or to try to begin developing a Career Plan. Until the employee has some definitive direction in his own mind, it will be premature to develop an action plan. Most employees are thinking about today or, at best, tomorrow. Few of them are thinking three years out. You will find most of your employees will be eager to look at the future. A few are already thinking about it and there will be a few that aren’t ready or really are not looking to make significant advances. Again, you should not conduct these sessions if you are not prepared or not able to follow-up. You will lose credibility. Step 5 Develop an Action Plan The Career Action Plan differs from an employee’s Performance Plan. The career plan is more strategic and focuses more on expertise and acquiring certain experiences. Both plans should compliment and be supportive of the other, however. A career plan should also be supportive of the IT team’s mission. It is not appropriate to devote time, money, and energy into activities that develops sales skills unless sales skills are needed for future technology positions. The action plan should consist primarily of the training and experience opportunities that lead to the next position in the employee’s plan. You should also keep your planning open to providing opportunities now that lead to a more long term role when the opportunity presents itself.


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By previously developing the requirements for each IT position, you already have a guide by which to begin developing an employee’s Career Action Plan. It is appropriate to have elements of the following listed in the Career Plan:

1. Specific experiences 2. Specific accomplishments 3. Successful performance of specific responsibilities 4. Education or training requirements and/or certification 5. Time in a certain position of responsibility

As just mentioned, the Career Plan and the Performance Plan should support one another. If you have a Career Plan in place, the Performance Plan should have quite a few items in it that reinforces the career direction of the employee, especially in the Training and Education section. A Career Plan is dynamic and will change over time. It is not uncommon for an employee to change direction dramatically once he/she begins to better understand what actually takes place in the role that was targeted. The important issue is that you are helping you employee plan and work for the future, not just today. There is a major side benefit in conducting and managing to Career Plans. It allows you to have more quality time with the employee and it identifies long term strategies to help the employee grow. A manager that is able to help his entire team grow more than they normally would will achieve much more than other managers. Helping the employee develop capabilities and to grow within the company will create a strong sense of commitment to the company and your team. It helps the employee win, the team wins and the company wins. The manager wins as a result. Can you see any reason why you would not want to develop Career Plans for your Employees now ? If you have developed Career Plans and Performance Plans for your staff, you have taken a quantum leap toward providing individual focus for your team that will create positive results in motivating and developing your staff.


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VI. Tap Into the Leaders of Your Organization

Identify the key people in your organization as early as you can. There are going to be those that can just accomplish more and that others on the team gravitate to for their knowledge and leadership. These are the people that can help you achieve great results. They are also important in developing and maintaining positive morale. One of the keys to positive morale in any IT organization is the ability to attain successes. The leaders of the organization are your lieutenants that can make those successes happen. You also need to use them to help you integrate certain philosophies throughout the organization. Personal Note: In one new IT organization that I picked up responsibility for many years ago there were 26 employees. About half were programmers, the other half were application specialists (software installers and trainers), help desk, or computer operators. There were three key leaders on the team and it did not take long to find out who they were. One of the first things we did was to create a leadership meeting (that’s what I will call it here; no one in the group knew that’s what we were doing at the time). From these meetings, I was able to develop a quick perspective of the business issues we faced, quite a bit about client dynamics and personalities, and even more about staff capabilities. These initial discussions were invaluable in helping me to formulate our set of issues and challenges and to focus the team on the right issues to solve. They were not the only input mechanism to be sure but they were instrumental in helping me come up to speed quickly in an organization that I was totally unfamiliar with at the time. When you discover a leader within the group, take the opportunity to give that person specific responsibilities that help the team and yourself succeed. Let’s be very clear here: “When you find strength, use it, , , even exploit it to create success.”

I’m not suggesting you use people for your own gain at their expense. You should take advantage of their ability to help you and by doing that you will be developing your resource for more opportunity. If you do not have leaders within the group, you had better find some. Unless you have great potential with staff that has raw potential and you know you can develop leadership with what you have, you better find a way to bring additional leadership skills into the group. Granted, there are exceptions to this as might exist in a very small IT organization that is not anticipated to grow. But, even in such a case the first rule of management is to find or develop your replacement. Enough said.


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You will find that the people that exhibit leadership skills will be your more proactive types. They see problems and they work proactively to do something about them. These lieutenants can be extremely valuable to you and allow you an opportunity to initiate a strategy that can be handed off to one of them to execute. Look for your leaders and find ways to give them more to do. They will not only respond positively, it will motivate them considerably. It also motivates the rest of the organization when they see the manager delegating responsibilities and not just tasks.


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VII. Take Advantage of Strengths and Develop Strength and Depth

As we have discussed earlier, your organization needs experts and depth of skill. If you do not plan to have both internally within the team you must find a way to augment your needs with outside consultants. Either way will work. Similar to the last chapter of “tapping into the leaders of the organization”, you need to take advantage of the strengths you have. If you have done a good job in assessing your IT organization needs to support the IT and company mission, you will have a defined set of skills and experience you want on the team to achieve success. Line up your staff against your organization needs defined in your assessments. When you have strength in positions that are critical to the business, reinforce it by reaching out to the individual and developing plans to create more depth as needed. If you do not have strength in a critical area, look through your employee list and make a determination as to whether anyone has the ability to develop those skills quickly or that you will have to hire someone from outside. Depending upon the situation I would tend to always go with someone on the staff if possible. It shows confidence in your employees, a commitment to develop and promote from within, and you are dealing with a known entity that ultimately reduces your risk. Take a methodical approach to quantifying your needs and matching up resources to fill those needs. Use the Employee Skills & Experience Matrix to help you quantify what you have and what you need. When you have a need to start a new initiative or learn about a new technology, try to use the strong people on your team. There will be cases where it’s prudent to use outside resources, but if possible use your own employees. Technical people want to learn more and their hard work and successful execution for you deserves the opportunity to be able to work on a new, fun project at times.


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VIII. Empowerment is KEY !!

Empowering your staff is key. You cannot emphasize this enough. It is the single trait that makes the difference in creating an organization that can run pretty much on its own. Part of my management philosophy has always been that my organizations should be able to function well without me at the helm. You don’t create such a situation unless you can empower your people to take their responsibilities seriously and they know how to take care of business. Empowerment is important at every level in your organization. The lowest paid employee needs to know what his responsibilities are, understand the importance of his role on the team, and feel empowered to be able to perform his job professionally and successfully. Empowerment does not mean there is no accountability or inspection by the manager on how the employee performs his responsibilities. On the contrary, inspection and accountability are always important. Empowerment does mean that you extend more freedom to the employee to make judgements in handling his/her responsibilities. There are a few keys in being able to empower others:

1. Provide the employee with enough guidance to help him in his decisions to prevent major mistakes.

2. Provide guidelines as to when issues should be escalated for a second opinion. 3. Quantify the employee’s responsibilities so he and others on the team know who has

the responsibility. Everything begins with definition of responsibilities. It’s important for the manager to define organizational responsibilities, team or sub-unit, and individual responsibilities. If you do a good job of this and you have placed the right people in the roles, step back and let it happen for you. Sidebar: Have you ever seen a football team practice where the coach is perched in the tower watching the plays? Empowerment is somewhat similar to this. The football coach empowers his team and individuals of the team to carry out certain initiatives. He can watch from the tower and does so with keen interest but he can’t go in and execute for his team. Monitoring activities and performance is important to be able to help your employees improve and to have success. It should not be considered as doing something that prevents an employee from being empowered. Empowering your employees signifies a trust that you have in them. A strong manager gives the employee room to make mistakes and to grow while monitoring closely enough to prevent the catastrophic error. Some of the greatest lessons we all learn are through our mistakes. How do you get an organization to a level that they can run on “auto-pilot” ?


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Follow these steps:

1. Define every organization’s responsibilities. 2. Define each team or sub-unit’s responsibilities. 3. Define each team member’s individual responsibilities. 4. Define the process by which each functional area should manage it’s business. 5. Define escalation procedures. 6. Define success criteria for each level of the organization. 7. Place competent people in the leadership positions of the organization. 8. Communicate the long term vision of where the organization needs to be. 9. Meet regularly with the leaders to reinforce key success factors.

There is quite a bit of work associated with these nine items as you might expect. No one said it was a matter of “falling off the log” to position your organization to run on it’s own. Tapping into your leaders and the strength in your team can help you develop the substance of these items and will help you get the team into an “auto-pilot” mode. You may never completely get there but getting close is worthwhile and is a strong motivator for your staff. In addition, they will be learning how to quantify responsibilities and processes as they watch your actions in doing this. Remember always, much of what people learn is by observing their managers over the years, the coaching discussions you have, and the examples and thoughts that you convey to them.

“Empower your people and watch your results improve !”


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IX. Always Reinforce TEAM

Everyone on my team has heard at one time or another, , ,

“Everyone wins when the team wins; no one wins unless the team wins.” It doesn’t matter what example you want to use. In any team sport or business, to be as successful as you have potential for, you have to work as a team. No one wins the World Series, or Stanley Cup, or Super Bowl by having the greatest player. They have to have a collection of great players and bench players that can work as a team to achieve success. As the manager, it can be very easy for you to show partiality to a few of your key employees, especially those that are so good. Personal Note: I had a young manager running one of six geographically located organizations in the mid-80’s. He wanted to give out three awards to people in his group for achievements. On the surface, this sounded like a great idea and something I have always been in favor of. After learning that the three awards would be going to his most senior people, I pulled him aside to discuss the cause and effect of his decisions. In this case, these three people were always doing great things. That’s why they were identified as leaders of the organization. The problem comes when everyone else sees that only the strongest of the staff are being recognized. Your leaders should have higher expectations on them because they are stronger and are usually paid more. You should expect more of them than you might expect of your 3rd shift computer operator. The other lesson is that you have to spread your awards around so everyone feels they have the opportunity to receive recognition from their manager. After discussing this at some length, he understood the value of reconsidering his decisions. Had I let him proceed as he had planned, he had a very good chance of alienating two-thirds of the staff. Often times, it’s much easier to prevent a problem than to fix a problem. There are a couple of lessons from sports that I have picked up along the way that have stuck with me. Two, in particular, stand out in my mind that are worth sharing here. The first is a Notre Dame football example. When Lou Holtz became coach he took the names of the players off the backs of their jerseys. His point was that they all had to work as a team to win and in that context, everyone’s name was “Notre Dame Football” so there was no need for a name to be placed on a jersey. They won a national championship.


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The second example was when Pat Riley coached the Los Angeles Lakers in the early 80’s and they defeated the Boston Celtics for the World Basketball Championship. He was asked what made the difference that year versus the previous year when they were defeated in the championships by Boston. His reply was that he asked every player to improve each of their individual statistics over the previous year’s by ten per cent. In other words, increase your average points per game by 10%, your rebounds per game by 10%, etc. He also encouraged each of them to help everyone on the team to accomplish this goal. The result was a fantastic season and convincing wins in the playoffs and championship series. He also saw the cumulative effect of these individual accomplishments for the team. It spelled “winner”. How do you reinforce “team” with your staff ? One way is to do things together. That might be as simple as having monthly staff meetings where you reinforce the accomplishments and the challenges of your team. It’s the little things that you do that count for a lot. Small comments in the hallway or in meetings are remembered for a long time by your staff. There are things people remind me of today that have long been forgotten by me but they remember because their manager made the comment and it made a permanent impression on them. Another way a manager reinforces “team” is by taking the flack when things go bad. A problem may have been caused by one of the team members but when trouble occurs, it’s the manager’s role to take the heat. Ultimately, the “buck stops with me.” After the exchange of gunfire, you certainly should coach your employee on any improvement needed, but the team and the employee that made the mistake sees the manager supporting the team. Create “esprit de corps” by providing a bit of “rah rah” in your team meetings. If you don’t get “pumped up” by sharing the team’s successes and in believing in your mission, no one will. Create a little excitement and “rev your employees up”. Conduct a meeting off site and weave some fun into the time. It can be a bowling party, a day at the lake after the meeting, or a Christmas party. Letting people to get to know one another socially increases their bond for one another and causes them to want to help one another during the tough times, , , and there will be some tough times. Reinforce teamwork in individual performance plans. Developing an employee’s sense of the importance of teamwork instills the right mindset in an employee and it reinforces their individual development toward things that help the team succeed. I’ve mentioned this before, but one of the important lessons in my management career was in an early management role where my boss helped me understand that what was important was what I could accomplish with my team, not what I could do individually. The results of the team will always be greater and more important for your company.


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Reward and acknowledge your team and members of the team rather than taking credit for their accomplishments. When the IT organization succeeds, the manager receives recognition automatically by definition. The success would not have been possible without the successful activities of members of the team. Even if you personally turn an ugly client situation around, give the team credit. Keep these two principles in mind always:

1. The team and it’s members always create the success. 2. Failures are always the manager’s responsibility.

If you conduct your communications in this way, you will have your staff following your leadership. No one wants to work for the manager that takes all the credit and avoids all blame. We have all seen these types; they don’t usually go very far, and they certainly do not have a strong following.


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X. Share Victories and Defeats

Your IT staff loves to hear good news. They want to be successful individually and they want to be part of a successful organization and company. Positives reinforce and cause more positives. It’s like a virus that spreads like wildfire. The converse is true as well. People are motivated by achieving successes. In addition, we all learn from our mistakes. Take the opportunity as the manager to take a big blunder and explore it. Make an example of it in a meeting and dissect it openly with your team. Even go as far as to hanging a rubber “dead chicken” from the employee’s cube that makes the biggest blunder in a month. You can actually have some fun with the defeats of the organization and use them to help you reinforce the type of behavior or process that you have to have to be successful. Often, these mistakes can do more for you than the “wins”. You certainly should not try to humiliate an individual for a big mistake, but using it as an example on how we can succeed in the future is worthwhile. Just be sensitive and approach the “dissection” so you don’t ruin a good employee. It’s also perfectly all right to make fun of your own mistakes as the manager. If you are like most of us, you will have plenty of opportunity. What this teaches everyone is that you do not have to be perfect to be successful, and that it’s all right to laugh at yourself once in a while. When it becomes a regular routine, maybe we need to have a more serious discussion. In fact, you can have serious discussions about a defeat with the employees involved and should. Sidebar: I once read an article about a manager in IBM that had made a million dollar mistake. His boss was asked whether he was going to fire the manager. He replied, “Certainly not; I’ve just made a million dollar investment in his education for the job.”

“A person who makes no mistakes is not doing very much.”

We have mentioned that employees need to hear about the victories and the wins. That’s true. They also need to hear more than just about what is happening in their area. As their manager you have an excellent opportunity to share company news and other things going on in various parts of the company. Your employees want to be informed. If they aren’t, they discuss this problem with others. It's not a positive discussion. In fact, it’s one of frustration. It helps keep morale high by keeping your staff informed. Make it a habit of conducting regular sessions to keep your people informed. Good news about events in the company are things your people are interested in. Regular sessions also give you an opportunity of explaining changes that are occurring in the company and why. Keeping people informed and “out of the dark” is a good thing.


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People want to know about successes and key events that occur in:

- the company - your industry - other company departments - the IT organization - individual accomplishments - client events

Personal Note: I can remember when I was a rookie at IBM in the late 70’s. I looked forward to our monthly location meetings and our annual branch kickoff meeting so much. It was a time to hear news about the company, sales successes, and to learn more of the strategy and emphasis of our operations. To me, it was an exciting time that I looked forward to. It was also a time where we always tried to do something fun for the group. Skits were commonplace and these events helped mold my management approach very early on in my career. I’ve done a lot of skits in my day.


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XI. Appreciate Their Work

Do you genuinely appreciate the work your staff gets completed ? If not, or you don’t know, you need to step back a second and reflect on this a bit. If you don’t feel good about what your people are getting accomplished, how do you expect them to feel good about it ? Show your appreciation. Information Technology people are conscientious and they work hard to do a good job. They may not carry the same load of responsibility as their manager, but it does not mean they don’t care or worry about their area of responsibility just as much. Have you ever given a thought as to how much it means to you for your manager or someone of responsibility to tell you, “Job well done.” or “You have just made my day.” ? It works the same way for your employees. People rally behind those that they respect and believe in. By offering a sincere ‘Thank you’ or complimenting a person in front of their peers is a huge boost to morale. Personal Note: I held a monthly staff meeting one time as a young manager. A week or so later I was discussing various issues with a couple of people on my staff and one of them made a comment that gave me a boost. It was something I never realized and something I’ve tried to make a point of doing since then. His comment was that he really enjoyed our monthly staff meetings because it kept him informed and was a real plus for the staff. He then mentioned that in the last meeting he noticed that I had mentioned every person by name and a contribution they had made during the past month during my update discussion at least once. Upon reflecting on his comment, I knew that it was actually part of my preparation routine for the meeting every month. It made me remember many a meeting when I was the employee sitting in the audience and how gratifying it was to hear my name mentioned for contributing positively to our organization’s mission. There are many ways you show your appreciation for your employees. From a simple ‘Thank you’ to asking about their weekend. It’s not all about what you get done between 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday. Staying in communication with them when they are working on a project out of town tells them that you are interested in their work and that you will be there for them if they need your support. Calling a status meeting to get an update on their project gives you a chance to inspect and an ability to express your appreciation for their focus and hard work.


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When you have an opportunity to make a presentation to a larger group that includes employees from other departments, part of your message should be the positive things that are getting done by your staff. Give the team credit and thank the other departments for their assistance and support. It’s not hard, you just have to take a pulse every now and then and remind yourself that it’s important to the troops. After a while, it will become part of your normal routine.


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XII. Have Fun

I really like this part. IBM in the late seventies was a special place. Our branch meetings were always fun as well as taking care of business. Computers were just becoming affordable by small companies and the newness of getting your first computer was a sight to behold. It was a great time. IBM instilled in me a deep appreciation for having fun; the phrase “work hard; play hard” keeps ringing in my ear. We certainly worked hard at IBM in those days and we enjoyed the camaraderie of one another a great deal. I can remember the late nights installing systems and joining the poker games in the hotel room when several of us were “in the territory” for a week. Maybe that’s why I worked late at an installation, , , to reduce my poker losses. Having fun is very important. The organization will have more fun if the manager leads the way. To a certain extent, your employees will find a way to have fun with or without you, but it’s going to be more fun if their manager supports, even leads the way. In this publication and others in the series, there are numerous examples of having fun. You should not need too much help to develop a few ideas of your own. But, just in case I will offer a few. Some of these ideas are also small rewards for your staff.

1. Have pizza delivered for lunch. 2. Go to the nearest grocery and buy ice cream sandwiches and pass them out. 3. Do a short skit in a monthly meeting. 4. Do a slide show roast of someone that needs to be roasted. Most of us do. 5. Conduct a user group meeting of clients and take key people to the meeting. 6. Have an offsite meeting on a houseboat and spend the afternoon having fun. 7. Take employees to lunch for a roundtable discussion 8. Buy the staff drinks after work one day. 9. Show a motivational film at a meeting. 10. Hang a rubber chicken above the employee’s cube that makes the biggest mistake in a

month. Managers are not exempted. 11. Have a contest and take the winners to a ball game. 12. Hand out “nights on the town” occasionally for exceptional performance. 13. Find a reason to hand out some $20 bills to four or five people. 14. Give everyone a silver dollar with a message you want emphasized. Every time they

see their silver dollar, they will remember the theme. OK, I’m running into material that should go in the next section so we will stop here. There are any number of ways that you can create an atmosphere of fun, reward, and appreciation. That’s what it is really about – creating a tone or atmosphere that is a healthy environment to work in. Do this and your employees will think you are the greatest manager they have ever had. And guess what, , , you probably will be.


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XIII. Reward Desired Behavior

There are two things you want to reward in your staff: desired behavior and accomplishments. Let’s take rewarding desired behavior first. Rewarding behavior that creates and supports the environment you are trying to establish in your IT organization is important. Going the extra mile for a client, anticipating and taking steps to prevent a problem from happening, taking an extra step in the quality assurance of a programming change, helping another employee out when the need arises; you can go on and on. Creating a team is a lot about behavior. Functioning as a unit as opposed to a bunch of individuals has a lot to do with individual behavior. Don’t forget this important aspect. Yes, it’s often easier to identify an accomplishment, but rewarding the right behavior will cause others to emulate this behavior. It starts with you, the manager. Live the example that you want to see in others and reward those that make a difference in the organization by exhibiting the behavior you are looking for. You should have already determined that if you are going to give a reward for something, it’s a good idea to define what it is and how you will recognize it when you see it. For example, you want your people to be respective and helpful to a client always. If there are tough discussions needed to take place with the client, that’s actually the manager’s job, not the technical staff. When one of your people goes out of their way to either solve a problem for a client or to prevent an issue, make it known. Rewards can be monetary, gift items, or just an acknowledgement of how much their behavior is appreciated and how it makes a difference. Desired behavior occurs when it is defined as a requirement for success, when it is looked for, and when you reward or acknowledge it. You should look for rewarding desired behavior in your entry level staff. They do not have as much opportunity to gain recognition for successfully completing major projects and when you see a young staff member pick up on one of your coaching sessions, let everyone know about it. The result will be that others will work harder to achieve the behavior you are looking for and the employee recognized will strive harder for more recognition. You can’t lose when this happens. I have always rewarded behavior events at the same level as accomplishing major projects. Both are just as important as the other in helping you motivate and develop your staff. An award offers you the ability to tie a message to it that shows you genuinely care about what you have been coaching to your employees.


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Personal Note: In one of my IT organizations, I created a Monthly Manager’s Award for the most significant event in a month that I thought contributed to our team efforts. The award was a small crystal obelisk about six inches high. The award only cost thirty dollars, but you would have thought it was a valuable item. Everyone on the team wanted one; the recognition factor was significant. Even employees from other groups wanted to know how they could qualify. This made my team feel special ! Every presentation of the award gave me an opportunity to emphasize the value of the rewarded employee’s contribution, , , as much as I wanted. After all, it was my meeting. The contribution varied from significant accomplishments to excellence in an area of behavior that I was trying to instill in the team. In looking back, I believe the team received the most value when an award was given for excellence in certain behavior. I can tell you that it had impact and contributed to others working harder because there was incentive to be recognized. Not a bad return for a $30 investment, and it was a lot of fun.


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XIV. Reward Accomplishments

Rewarding accomplishments is a bit easier in that they are usually tied to a specific initiative or project. You can set up an award that is automatic upon completion of the project or you can make awards more random. I’ve always liked surprising people the most. When you are trying to determine what to reward and to whom the rewards should go to, be certain to “spread the wealth”. What I mean by this is that you should include junior as well as senior staff members and include all the different departments in your organization. It is important to show balance in your recognition efforts and not reward the same people every time, even if they are your best people. Rewarding an accomplishment should provide a brief background about the project and why this particular event justified an award. It is doubtful that you will make an award for every project completion in your organization so tell your employees why you are giving the reward. Doing this gives you an additional opportunity to direct everyone’s efforts toward the aspects of completing projects in a way that improves your business. A few additional ideas for recognizing the traits that you want are:

- “Manager’s Pick” certificate - Buy collector coins and give them for rewards. Silver dollars are fun. - Plaques engraved with the employee’s name and achievement - Desk paperweight with company inscription - T-shirt with company logo - Baseball cap with company or organization logo - Pen set - Gift certificate at the Mall

As you can see, there are any number of ideas that you can come up with and most are inexpensive. When most employees are polled, they stay with a company because of several reasons:

- Opportunity - Strong management - Ability to learn - Enjoy their job and their environment

I have seen many surveys about why employees stay with a company. None of the surveys say that they stay for money. In fact, it’s the intangibles such as being appreciated, being part of a successful company and organization, having an opportunity to learn, and enjoying their work environment that makes an employee loyal. Some might call that being motivated and developed by their manager.


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XV. Communication is a Two-Way Street

Communication is an absolute necessity if you are to motivate and develop your staff. You don’t get to know what makes an individual “tick” by reading the tea leaves. You have to observe and have meaningful conversations with them. Most of all, you have to listen to your employee. Too many times, the manager is doing all the talking. That’s not a real discussion; it’s a presentation.

Open communication creates trust and faith in your leadership. There will be employees that will never initiate a conversation with their manager, and then there are those that want to be in your office all the time. For the shy ones, initiate situations for them and discuss topics that make them comfortable to discuss. Over time you can open up even the shyest of employees. By definition, having a manager title can be intimidating to some. Be aware of this so you don’t unintentionally intimidate your employees.

Creating open discussions and asking for their input will offset the “intimidating manager” image that might come with the position. You can also be intimidating if you are a quiet, reserved manager. The point here is to create an environment that allows your employees to express their opinion and to provide input into topics. Maintaining an open environment that shows one another respect is an important part of creating an atmosphere that motivates staff. Create the right balance and your employees know that you respect their opinion but in the end, you are the manager and will make the decision on issues where there opinions differ.


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XVI. Always Have an Open Door

Telling your staff that you always have an open door to them is not much good if you don’t operate that way. In my opinion, your most important responsibility as a manager is to be there for your employee when they need advice or help. There is nothing more important.

It all goes for naught if the employee does not feel comfortable in discussing a tough situation with you. You don’t get that right just because you have a title of manager. You get it with trust and confidence the employee has built up with you over time. A seasoned manager with sound organizational skills will notice behavior that might suggest an employee is having difficulty. If you determine such a situation exists, you should ask the employee a few leading questions that provides an opportunity for him/her to ask for advice. Personal Note: By nature, I’m a shy person and can at times even be considered aloof or distant. Caring for your staff and nurturing their behavior and focus is not that hard to do; you just need to know what to do. Even though I’m a shy person, it has always been easy for me to create a sense of openness as it relates to the business. Part of the openness has to do with my willingness to discuss aspects of my family and to share stories that are important to me personally. In my opinion, it’s quite all right for your employees to view their manager as a real human being with feelings, concerns, likes, and dislikes. Humanizing your role creates an open relationship and encourages trust among your team. Open door in many companies means an employee has the ability to discuss a topic with his manager, his manager’s manager, or even someone at a higher position. My discussions with staff has always been that you always have the right and the opportunity to discuss an issue with my manager, but I would always hope that you have had the discussion with me first. If there is a reason an employee needs to go around you, there is a serious problem somewhere. You can’t fix it if you don’t know what it is. I think the same principle should hold true as it relates to an employee going to Human Resources. A good HR manager will always ask, “Have you had this discussion with your manager?” Create an open environment that encourages input and feedback from the staff and you won’t have surprise meetings with other managers or the HR staff.


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XVII. Motivating in a “Down Economy”

“What goes up must come down.” Yes, that’s certainly the law of physics; it is also reflective of what happens to every company at one time or another. Even IBM began issuing forced retirements in the 1980’s after finding itself in need of refocusing the company. IBM had never had a downsizing in its history. Today, they are back into a growth mode. With the economy slowing and the ultimate failure of so many “dot com” companies in 2000, companies like Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel saw revenues drop sharply and their stock prices followed. Cisco up to that time had set the record for reaching record revenues and earnings for the most quarters in a row. It seemed that there was no ceiling on their growth potential in the new economy we saw in the 1990’s. Enjoy the ride up and prepare yourself for the fall that ultimately comes. The fall may be a short one or it may be a fall that has a big “thud”. I have been on both rides and I can tell you the ride up is much more fun and less stressful. No one likes dealing with the issues that are required when revenues and earnings go soft. To survive, you have to address the expense side when revenues fall. In most cases, the largest expenses of a company are in salaries and compensation. When you find yourself managing in an environment that has to downsize, there are several things you can do to keep your staff motivated. It will be a challenge and providing leadership and a strong work ethic example is critical in these times. In your first meeting with your remaining employees after a downsizing occurs, you will need to stress the business factors that forced the downsizing action. Assure every employee that it has nothing to do with any individual but was precipitated more so by market conditions or events that impacted the company negatively. Don’t get into discussions concerning any individual employee that was let go. You can do no good by airing out issues that affected your final decisions on who to keep and who to let go with your staff. Limit the discussions to company level business factors and then move on. A few points to keep in mind and that will help keep your IT staff focused and motivated include during and after downsizing events:

1. Keep the staff busy - When you have a lot to do it makes it harder to dwell on the negatives associated with downsizing.

2. Reinforce the company - Keep the positives of your company in front of your employees. They need to hear good news of events that provide assurance of the company’s future viability.

3. Communicate often - Share news of all sorts to keep your staff ‘out of the dark’. 4. Reward - Reward successes and teamwork. Try to maintain a ‘business as usual’

demeanor as quickly as possible.


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5. Reinforce the “why it had to happen” - Tough decisions must be made to keep the business intact and to support the whole. New growth ultimately comes to the companies that make tough decisions during the hard times. The bottom line is that those that are still here still have a tremendous opportunity. Now is the time to take advantage of it. Be respectful of past employees and don’t dwell on it.

6. Emphasize it is an ‘event’ not an ongoing process - Creating a sense of future stability is important to your employees. Most downsizing situations are one-time events and not continuous in nature. If you are in a position to influence a downsizing event, try to make sure you take care of the business once and for all. Having to repeat negative events such as this will cause you to lose people that you can’t afford to lose due to the uncertainty you will create.

7. Reinforce the importance of your department - The greatest concern of the employee will be, “Am I next ?”. Tie the necessity of your organization to the company’s mission and emphasize the need for your employees to stay focused in delivering IT services to your clients. Focus is more important now than ever before.

8. Create a long term vision - Create a vision for the future as best as you can. You must always be honest and truthful. Getting by a tough time often opens up additional opportunities for companies, departments, and individuals. One concern employees will have is that the company lacks direction and has no plan. Part of your job as their manager will be to assure them that there is a strategy as well as a plan to accomplish the company’s mission. If you don’t really have one, you better create one.

9. Count on your leaders - Pull your senior employees in to help you reinforce your operation’s mission and to assist in pushing morale up. Employees tend to feel a “we versus they” when a downsizing occurs. As the manager, you may have better ability to reach certain employees through one of your senior staff members.

10. Train them on something new - Most IT employees want to learn. Find something to train them on that helps them individually as well as the team.

Regardless of what you do, there will be some employees that have a very difficult time with the actions that just took place. You can have empathy but you also have a job to do. Be mindful of the impact that a negative influence can have on your team’s results and take appropriate action to manage the negative feelings some will have. Your best bet in dealing with those that persist in feeling the company has “wronged” others is to address the issue head on just as you would in a normal situation. Keep emotions and personality out of the employee discussion but assure the employee that negative behavior does not help the team and won’t be tolerated. An honest approach that points out the positives for the future and a commitment to get the job done just as before should have impact on most employees. If it doesn’t, further actions may be required for the benefit of the team.


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Summary

In summary, motivating and developing your IT staff has as much to do with being organized, establishing priorities and a vision for the organization, defining roles and responsibilities, and creating an environment of open dialogue with a twist of fun thrown in somewhere. Motivating others is not necessarily a conscious act. It is a way of life as a manager in the business world that creates trust and confidence in what you are about. Follow the guides presented in this document and you will develop your employees more and they will be highly motivated individuals that will go the distance for you every time they are asked to.


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Appendix A Employee Skills and Experience Matrix Template

Skills / Expertise Matrix

Skill / Expertise Strong Avg Weak Needs


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Appendix B Education & Training Needs

Training Needed Primary

Staff Backup

Staff


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Appendix C Career Planning Template

Current Position