by Bryan Saba
Managing Director @ Excite IT
This question is often asked of business managers or owners, but it’s not often that this same theme is reflected on a Department or Regional executive. Are you an IT manager, CIO or CTO who is experiencing the following in your IT department?
- The regular management of support calls, escalations and personal task lists.
- Feeling stuck in an abyss of never-ending tasks that are not aligned to any greater business goals or purpose.
- The responsibility for the design and ironing out trivial technical details.
- A shrinking time slot in the businesses weekly executive meeting, where the voice of the IT department is no longer being listened to.
- Reactive and ad hoc requests from your businesses managers for new applications, integrations and IT support that are not aligned to your business’s objectives.
If so you are not alone. Too many IT managers, CIO’s and CTO’s are distracted by the details of their IT department’s day to day activities. Rarely finding the time or energy to focus on taking a step back and considering how they could better align their team’s effort to the business’s goals. Working in and not on your IT department is no-ones fault. Overtime it is easy to get caught up in always playing catch up and dealing with random requests.
Is this where you want to be? Here are the 5 tips to get you back on track – to focus on and not in your IT department.
- Take the time to define and understand your bigger IT objectives
Firstly, you need to understand the short, medium and long term objectives of the business. It is imperative that your IT objectives align with these – in some cases, IT objectives need to be fulfilled in advance of business objectives, as the technology stack will partly, or fully, facilitate the achievement of the business objective.
Get away from the office with your IT team and have an honest conversation on how your current activities are actually contributing to the business’ objectives. You could be very busy doing lots of work and long hours with no meaningful results for your business. Create an actionable and realistic plan to hold your team accountable to.
- Change your management style from focusing on “task lists” to caring about “outcomes”
While your head is down in the details, you will lose focus on everything that is happening around you. Stop focusing on “how” things are being done and shift your focus on “what” is being done, and the outcomes of those activities.
With outsource providers, establish meaningful and productive KPI’s. Manage the outsourced arrangement via those KPI’s, along with supporting documentation and commentary, to provide context. This saves plentiful time, and keeps conversation away from opinion and closer to facts.
- Identify your A team and delegate with confidence
Create an internal team that is going to work well in an IT department that is driven by outcomes. When delegating, do not hover around your team, you need to get off the tools and empower your team to perform their roles. Also ensure that your external team of IT suppliers, such as your managed services providers and technology vendors, are aligned to helping you achieve your vision.
It’s important you have the “A Team”, your empowerment should not be mistaken with a reduced level of care.
- See what is happening on the other side of the fence
When you get some of your time back from implementing the above, use these re-found hours to network and learn from other operations. How have other IT departments implemented change and structured their operations. This is a good opportunity to get inspired and is part of Continuous Improvement Programs. In the longer-term, your business leaders will appreciate the value it brings.
- Reward and recognise the positive change in your team
Reward the positive behaviours in your team. In order of sustainability, reward and recognition is vital. The last thing you want, is to walk the hard yards in making the shift, to only find that it wasn’t sustainable due to lack of recognition, which is a team’s strongest motivator. Regular recognition, of positive behaviours, will equate to increased awareness, friendly competition and sustainability.
Secondly, most IT departments are by nature made up of technical and detail driven individuals. To get your team to focus on strategy will take a while and may result in some resistance in the early days. Keep reminding your team what you are working towards.
While this is a lot easier said then done. Persistence will pay off.