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Why Being Right Is Key to Working with IT
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By: Don E. Sears
2009-09-14
Article Rating: / 44
There are 21 user comments on this IT Management story.
An IT manager at Purdue University details what he thinks matters to IT workers on the job, and what business managers gain to learn from this information. Having respect and being right outweigh almost everything else in ranks of the technology worker.
The disconnect between technology workers and
business-centric workers is a theme you see regularly, and it couldn't be more
important in challenging economic times. How you work with management, and how
they understand how you think is of particular interest when the difference
between your productivity and your peers' is being closely evaluated on a
weekly basis. It could be the difference between you keeping your job and
losing it.
So if you are looking for an article that helps cut through the misconceptions
and exaggerations of technology workers, be sure to read "The Unspoken Truth
About Managing Geeks" by Purdue University's Jeff Ello, who is a
"hybrid veteran of the IT and CG industries, currently managing IT for the
Krannert School of Management." Ello takes a stab at explaining—in great
detail—what drives technology workers to perform well and what gets under their
skin. In better understanding these issues, management and techies may be able
to find better common ground to make projects more successful and less
formidable.
Ello talks about the value of respect on the job, and calls it a
"currency" that is not to be squandered:
"Gaining
respect is not a matter of being the boss and has nothing to do with being
likeable or sociable; whether you talk, eat or smell right; or any measure that
isn't directly related to the work. The amount of respect an IT pro pays
someone is a measure of how tolerable that person is when it comes to getting
things done, including the elegance and practicality of his solutions and
suggestions. IT pros always and without fail quietly self-organize around those
who make the work easier, while shunning those who make the work harder,
independent of the organizational chart.
"This
self-ordering behavior occurs naturally in the IT world because it is populated
by people skilled in creative analysis and ordered reasoning. Doctors are a
close parallel. The stakes may be higher in medicine, but the work in both
fields requires a technical expertise that can't be faked and a proficiency
that can only be measured by qualified peers."
Ello goes on to say that IT workers would rather work for a jerk who is right
than someone who makes mistakes regularly and is often wrong. Being wrong,
according to Ello, is the worst that you can be in IT because it leads to
failures and more unnecessary work and is considered an "evil." Ello
continues:
"Capacity for technical reasoning trumps all other professional factors,
period. Foundational (bottom-up) respect is not only the largest single
determining factor in the success of an IT team, but the most ignored. I
believe you can predict success or failure of an IT group simply by assessing
the amount of mutual respect within it."
Ello's assessment is backed by Paul Glen, a principal at C2 Consulting, who is
author of the book Leading Geeks: How to Manage and Lead
People Who Deliver Technology. In an interview with ZDNet Australia, Glen said:
"Their
judgment is swift and merciless. When geeks perceive that someone in their work
environment is ineffective due to incompetence or aberrant behaviour, they have
a tendency to dismiss that person completely. They also take great pride in
their work and take criticism personally. If a manager says a particular
interface makes no sense, he has to understand that’s like telling a geek his
child is ugly. They put extraordinary effort into the creative solution of a
technical or business problem, and they take it personally if that solution is
criticised."
Glen goes further by outlining the challenge of managing people who know more
about what they are doing than managers who own the project. It's not a power
play, Glen says, but a more flattened hierarchy at play.
"Give
up on power. Power is central to most ideas about management, but when dealing
with geeks, it will lead you astray. Most managers' notions of their own power
get rather wrapped up in their own self-image and become hard to relinquish.
Unfortunately, since power is useless when dealing with geeks, managers must
dismiss the idea that power comes from being a manager. It's not that there is
no power in the geek manager role, but it comes from being in the center of all
the activity—from being the hub rather than from being on top of everything,
being the dictator."
Understanding the importance of respect—of business managers treating it a bit
more seriously and of tech workers understanding the weight they put on it—could
help ease some of the misunderstandings and project-related failures in
technology projects.
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