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Friday Philosophy – The Secret to Being a Good IT Manager June 3, 2011

Posted by mwidlake in Friday Philosophy, humour, Management.
Tags: , ,
10 comments

If you go into a book shop there will probably be a section on business and, if there is, there will almost certainly be a load of books on how to be a manager. Shelves and shelves of them. There is also a large and vibrant market in selling courses on management and aspects of management. I’ve been on a couple of such course and, if you can manage to be open minded whilst keeping a cynical edge, I think they can be useful.

However, I think I most of them are missing the key points and that if you can but hold on to the following extensive list of guiding principles you will be a good IT manager. Maybe even an excellent one :-):

  1. Your top priority, at all times, is to see to the best interests of your people.
  2. Whatever you develop, be it code, databases, network, a team of support staff – User Acceptance is paramount.
  3. You must find ways to deal with other teams and your own management hierarchy in such a way as to be allowed to do (1) and (2).
  4. That’s it.
  5. OK, if pushed, I’d say Never Lie. Maybe that’s just personal though, it’s because I don’t have the memory, audacity or swiftness of mind to pull it off. By not lying I don’t have to try and construct what I said to who and why.

I’m sure people could cite some other hard rules like “you must be within budget” or “you need to get buy-in to your vision” but I don’t agree. Budgets can be negotiated and the difference between those deemed visionaries and those deemed fantasists seems to be to me down to success and luck. Luck is luck and for success I refer you to points 1 through 5.

OK, maybe a final rule is:

  • Never ask for or aim for something that is not realistic.

So, I am now able to develop my team and my application and not expect to be able to spend half the company profit on the fastest box out there, as it is not realistic.

There are a shed load of other things that I think are important to helping you be a good manager, you know, techniques and methods for improving things, but nothing else that is key.

And it’s such a simple, small list even I can aim for it.

The shame of it is that I don’t think it’s enough to be developed into a book or a course so I can’t sell the idea. That and I’ve gone and given it away in this blog. Also, though I feel I can give points 1,2 and 5 a good shot, point 3 is way beyond me…possibly because of point 5… So I am not a great manager.

I’m going to hide behind this stout wall now, with my hard hat on, and wait to be told how naive I am…

Update – A couple of weeks later, Kellyn on her DBA Kevlar blog put similar sentiments to looking after your guys, more from the employee’s perspective and far better covered

Why given so many of us feel this way and want things to be this way…are they not?