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Empowering Your IT Staff To Do More With Less
Doing More With Less
The corporate mandate is to "do more with less"; therefore, employees are expected to pick up the slack. They have no choice but to be more productive! Unfortunately, physically and mentally the IT staff is burning out. IT executives feel they've implemented the key elements (processes, and technology) to build the ideal computing environment. Why is it that the staff is not performing at the level they're expected too? Effectively implementing processes and acquiring the best technology money can buy will help a bit
Like No Other Business
Many will agree that the business of IT is more difficult than managing any other business due to several reasons:
- Rapidly evolving technology
- Constant change
- Increasingly complex infrastructures
- Reduced IT budgets
- Overly demanding customers
- Life-long negative perception of IT
- Intensified political atmosphere
The ultimate goal in IT is to bring value to the business by helping the business become more productive and competitive. Unfortunately, this will need to be accomplished with a shrinking budget and fewer resources. So what else can we target to obtain results? The People.
Issues and Challenges
I've conducted over 350 IT organization assessments (Fortune 500 and Global 2000) and interviewed tens of thousands of IT professionals. I evaluated the data. Out of 83 issues (that were re-occurring) involving people, organization structure, processes, and technology, the top issue was people.
The list was truly eye-opening -> unbelievable!
The table below depicts a list of the people issues and challenges in IT:
- Staff is typically in a reactive mode
- Staff cannot effectively balance their life
- Staff is trying to manage their workload but many are failing miserably
- Many do not understand the business impact of their job
- Communication is atrocious
- Staff is too busy to, uninterested in, or unskilled in establishing and cultivating the appropriate relationships
- Staff lack effective time management skills
- Depression and lack of motivation is becoming more prevalent
- Non-stop politics is draining for all
- Quantity of work is affecting the quality of work
- Staff not working cohesively, cross-functionally (silos)
- Outsourcing is having a big negative impact on people
- Roles and responsibilities in a networked computing environment are a bit blurry
- Lack of patience is common among staff
- Staff burnout is becoming the pattern
- Strategic initiatives are taken out of the hands of senior infrastructure support staff
- Lack of time to train junior staff
- Small shop mentality - lack of true Data Center resources
- Lack of ownership and accountability of key enterprise-wide processes
- Staff is not embracing processes - there is a lack of commitment and buy-in
- Email is not people oriented
- Some very technical and bright individuals are not people oriented
- Staff oftentimes not appreciated by their customers
- Staff frustrated with internal bureaucracy
- Yearly HR performance appraisal program used to evaluate employees is not effective for IT
- Staff is not or does not feel empowered
- The organization structure has negatively impacted certain individuals
- Lack of proper leadership within IT
- Lack of awareness or attention from the rest of the senior management in the organization
- Culture barriers
- Difficulty dealing with "messy" situations
- Difficult to change mindset
- Management is too busy to effectively manage
- Helping IT staff transition into new positions
- Resolving behavior or performance problems
- Retaining key staff in the organization
- New corporate merger causes cultural conflict
IT executive management says their staff is their most important asset--the key to success. However, what are they really doing to help their staff combat these issues and challenges?
What's it going to take? IT professionals cannot always rely on management for help. If you work in IT you need to do something about improving your overall quality of life. It's fairly obvious that you need to change your current lifestyle to not only survive, but also at the end of the day accomplish more. The only way to achieve that is to use discipline to organize and structure your life. It's a proven fact if professionals manage their life efficiently they will become more productive.
IT Performance Mentoring Program
I introduce a formula for success. My vision brings the world of IT and discipline together to properly address the people issues in IT. My goal is to arm IT professionals with the right tool to empower them to become more productive not only in their career but also for their personal life as well. Discipline is the most important facet in one's lifetime. Those who do acquire discipline will have no limitations in accomplishing their wildest aspirations. Without it, you will struggle to exist.
To date, everyone has been utilizing point solutions (i.e., technical/management training classes, time management/motivational seminars, etc.). These are no longer sufficient. I believe in a principle that combines IT and discipline. I have developed a methodology, which is fundamentally based on discipline (self-management). Once the principle is embraced, the knowledge is used to execute, IT professionals will increase their chances for success in their profession. Moreover, they will learn how to effectively manage every aspect of their life. The IT Performance Mentoring methodology below serves as my guiding principle to train IT professionals:
- Pre-assessment
- Assessment
- Action Plan
- IT Performance Mentoring
- Ongoing monitoring
- Post IT Performance Mentoring
For further details on Harris Kern's IT Performance Mentoring methodology click on the following pdf
This IT Performance Mentoring Program is about Training the Mind, so you can use it as a tool to Manage Your Life as if it were a business. The business end of what it takes to get your life headed in the direction that you want it to go. You will learn how to train your mind and what the power of a trained mind can do for you.
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