{"id":1470,"date":"2007-05-26T14:21:37","date_gmt":"2007-05-26T14:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/new\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2014-10-26T14:37:41","modified_gmt":"2014-10-26T14:37:41","slug":"lessons-learned-effective-practices-in-it-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/?p=1470","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Learned: Effective Practices In IT Management"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This article was first published on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nten.org\/blog\/2007\/05\/23\/lessons-learned-effective-\">NTEN Blog<\/a> in May of 2007.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Peter Campbell, <a href=\"http:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/\">TechCafeteria.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve spent more than 20 years in the sometimes maddening, sometimes wonderful, world of IT management. Along the way I&#8217;ve worked under a variety of CEOs with very diverse styles, and I&#8217;ve developed, deployed and maintained ambitious technology platforms. In order to survive, I put together three basic tenets to live by.<\/p>\n<p>1. Management is 360 degrees: managing your superiors and peers is a bigger challenge than managing your staff.<\/p>\n<p>2. To say anything effectively in an organization, you have to say it at least three times in three different media.<\/p>\n<p>3. Follow Fidonet\u2019s basic social guideline, \u201cDo not be excessively annoying and do not become excessively annoyed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At a high level:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Work for the mission. Even in for-profit environments, I\u2019ve managed to the organizational goals, not the individual personalities. You will avoid more political damage and navigate your way around the politics far more easily if you do the same. Don\u2019t be scared of board or boss, and don\u2019t cave in easily. This doesn\u2019t mean that you countermand direct orders, but it does mean that you speak up if they don\u2019t make sense to you. If you are in a political environment where, at the top, personality and ego trump mission in setting organizational priorities, then get out.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Make your priorities well known. Don\u2019t ever assume that people are reading your business plans and proposals, and know for a fact that they haven\u2019t read your emails. The key to successful project planning is communication, and that means face to face discussions with all parties with a stake in the project, especially those that you don\u2019t particularly mesh with. Avoiding people who factor in your ability to succeed is a sure way to fail.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Take every opportunity to educate. Successful deployment of technology depends on joint ownership between the technology users and purveyors. Staff won\u2019t own the technology if they don\u2019t know what it does for them. In order to successfully manage technology, you need to constantly inform all parties at to what it can do for them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some other handy practices:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Run the IT Department as a lab \u2013 give your staff ample voice, diverse projects, and credit when they succeed. IT people, particularly in non-profits, are far more motivated by learning and accomplishing things than they are by money.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Value people skills, especially among your staff. Ability and comfort to communicate can be a more valuable talent than the ability to configure a Cisco 1750 blindfolded.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Marketing is not a dirty word! Sell your initiatives with PowerPoint, Project, and whatever else wows the suits.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Design for your users, not yourself. Stay aware that techies do not use the technology the way that everyone else does, and there is nothing wrong with everyone else \u2013 they just aren\u2019t techies. So make sure that the software is configured to their needs and desires, not yours.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Consultants Rock! (and I\u2019m not just saying that because I\u2019m now a consultant). If you are doing your job well, a consultant can help you build resources and improve your status with management. Simple fact: The CEO will always listen to the consultant say exactly what you\u2019ve been saying for years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Be opportunistic. Apply for grants \u2013 you don\u2019t have to wait for the grant writer to do it. Call different people at that vendor that you\u2019re seeking a charitable discount from, not just the ones who think it will lower their commission. And then, back to marketing \u2013 let the CEO know every time you succeed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Peter Campbell is a Business Technology Consultant focused on assisting members of the nonprofit\/social services community with revenue-generating projects and promoting organizational self-sufficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article was first published on the NTEN Blog in May of 2007. Peter Campbell, TechCafeteria.com I&#8217;ve spent more than 20 years in the sometimes maddening, sometimes wonderful, world of IT management. Along the way I&#8217;ve worked under a variety of CEOs with very diverse styles, and I&#8217;ve developed, deployed and maintained ambitious technology platforms.<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/?p=1470\">+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,79],"tags":[70,140,193,89,88,240,156,85],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nptech","category-starred","tag-communication","tag-education","tag-innovation","tag-leadership","tag-management","tag-nten-blog","tag-project-management","tag-strategy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1660,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcafeteria.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}