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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

I knew better.

Last week’s column finished by recommending that you avoid “hiring yourself” when filling management positions. It closed with a clincher: “After all, one of the most basic principles of information technology is to eliminate redundancy.” Jonathon Kass responded perceptively:

“This struck me as an odd statement — probably just because I’ve been focused for the last few months on our own department’s business continuity planning, availability stats, and general architecture needs. Of course, in that domain, redundancy is some of the core of what IT must provide – redundancy of a form that ensures the ongoing availability of critical services – redundant hardware, network connectivity, power, air conditioning, etc.”

Mr. Kass didn’t argue with the column’s general principle, but did suggest that the continuity thought process is relevant for staffing, and in particular for cross-training and succession planning. To which I say … after all, one of the basic principles of information technology is to plan redundancy. It’s as valid when choosing managers as it is with information engineering.

The main point is that the person in charge has a huge impact on performance. Twice. A week ago it was all about you. If you’ve been in charge for any length of time, and nothing is changing or the situation is deteriorating further, go back and read it.

Here’s the other half: Leaders at all levels can cause or encourage poor performance, which cascades in a sort of chain reaction through the chain of command. This makes it … what? A chain of command reaction? A bad leader recruits bad leaders or prevents good leaders from leading well. Those bad or prevented leaders do the same in turn. And so on, and so on, and so on.

In trying to sort out which of your managers can’t be rehabilitated, an excellent source of information is the collection of performance reviews they’ve filed. When you review them, you’ll almost certainly find some managers who have nothing but problem employees reporting to them. Put these managers at the top of the list of managers who need to find other opportunities — with your competitors if at all possible.

But keep the people who reported to them. I’ve lost track of how often bad managers hide and suppress the abilities of the good people they supervise.

Very recently I heard yet another example — the manager of a small workgroup that consistently hired outside consultants whenever difficult work was assigned, because her direct reports just didn’t have the skills. The recently hired CIO terminated her, asking her workgroup to take on a couple of challenging projects. You know what’s coming: They stepped up to the plate and hit, if not home runs, at least solid singles and doubles — good employees made bad by their manager.

You’ll also find managers who have only stars and superstars on their teams. Some really might be excellent leaders who recognize and insist on talent and drive among those they hire. You can recognize them through the performance reviews they authored. You’ll read nuanced (there’s that word again) accounts of each individual’s strengths and how they contribute to the overall health of the organization. And even the strongest individuals will have received suggestions for areas that would benefit from additional focus and attention.

But most managers with only stars and superstars will have written, over and over again, “Doing fine — keep up the good work.” They might have low standards. They might simply be afraid to lead, erroneously using the approval of those who report to them as a gauge of their abilities. Or, they might have misplaced their loyalty, figuring they’re competing with their peers for the raise pool, and are responsible for obtaining as much of it as possible for their team. (In some circumstances, this loyalty isn’t misplaced, either — it’s required to avoid having their peers raid the raise pool, leaving their employees high and dry. If that’s been the case, don’t blame the managers. Fix the circumstances.)

Keep every strong leader you possibly can. You’ll need them all. Can you turn the others around? They’ll take a lot of your time and attention; many will fail anyway.

Give them the attention. But not a lot of time.

Those who have the potential will demonstrate it quickly given an environment that encourages it. The rest? Give them time and they’ll figure they have all the time in the world.

Which is, of course, just another symptom of the problem.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Most IT professionals understand the need to work late from time to time. Suggest it’s a normal part of the profession, though, and you’ll get an earful. If I were a cynical sort, I’d think many IT professionals just aren’t happy without something to complain about.

Several weeks ago, I listed IT being a ghost town at 5pm as one of seven warning signs of a complacent IT organization. Not, I hasten to add, a certain diagnostic — just a warning sign. Into the fray steps Steve Delahunty:

“I had a … boss who complained that people were complacent … The problem was that when he left he didn’t peek into every cubicle and office. The lack of people around the halls in his view meant there was nobody there late. But also, we now can all work as easily at home as from the office. Meaning that I would often get online at night and see so many of my staff on their instant messenger clients it was like we were almost fully staffed online at 9pm with many folks working on work projects.”

Which brings up two points. The first is to be careful how you interpret what you see … and don’t see. Just as a doctor, facing a patient with a high fever, has a lot more work to do before reaching a diagnosis, a manager facing empty cubicles needs to dig in a bit before reaching a diagnosis of complacency.

The second is the subject of this week’s missive (credit where it’s due: it’s a recommendation by my partner, Steve Nazian): If you haven’t developed an instant messaging strategy for your company — one that facilitates its use while building in secure design, not one that locks it down — you’re creating, not preventing, a security hole.

We have more than two decades of experience managing and mismanaging personal technologies. Personal computers, electronic mail, remote system access, contact management software, personal digital assistants, Blackberries … it’s always depressingly the same:

1. IT forbids their use.

2. They leak in through the windows and side doors anyway.

3. A few employees are disciplined for violating company policy.

4. A rational executive somewhere in the business raises a huge stink about IT preventing employees from doing their work.

5. The CIO, recognizing the political liability of trying to keep the tide from coming in any longer, develops a strategy for managing the new technology instead of banning it.

This time it’s instant messaging. If you try to prevent it, employees will figure out a way to use it anyway. And once again, because their use is illicit, the workarounds will almost certainly create security holes. It’s akin to the well-known consequence of requiring strong passwords and forcing frequent changes: Post-It notes containing the hard-to-remember passwords stuck to computer monitors throughout the company.

There are still, in this industry, those who think the goal of security is to create an environment in which intrusions are impossible. If you’re one of these people, I can help. It’s actually quite easy. You can achieve it with three simple steps:

First, disconnect your internal network from the Internet. Second, disconnect all personal computers from the internal network, remove all disk drives and USB ports, and make printers illegal. And third, ban laptop computers from the enterprise altogether.

Of course, you’ll prevent employees from performing any useful work, but that’s just the unfortunate and unavoidable side effect of making the enterprise secure. It’s the nature of the beast. Security creates friction in business processes. The more secure you are, the higher the cost and slower the pace of doing business.

The best IT professionals put into practice what IT executives advise the rest of the company: They use information technology to maximize their own effectiveness. The best employees elsewhere in the company do likewise. Isn’t that the whole point of information technology — to help individual employees, workgroups, departments, divisions, and the enterprise as a whole work more effectively?

Instant messaging is simply the latest of the many tools available for enhancing personal effectiveness. In dealing with it, you have two choices.

You can either embrace it, and in doing so promote the very healthy attitude it represents. Or you can try to prevent it. Which is to say: You can either encourage a good attitude and improved security, or a bad attitude coupled with security holes.

Sad to say, far too many IT executives, faced with these alternatives, will instinctively choose the latter.

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