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Do IT professionals have adequate people skills to do their job properly?
The typical IT department is a tremendous vantage point from which to observe the big beasts of the corporate savannahs, constantly locked in ritual combat with each other.
But, of course, we are not simply innocent bystanders on a safari. We are the people that usually have to try and find common cause between frequently conflicting priorities and agendas. We are the ones who actually have to pull the whole thing together into some sort of coherent systems portfolio.
Which is probably why every good IT manager very quickly learns that the technology is always the easiest bit to manage – the really hard part of our job is dealing effectively with people.
So how can we make the hard part easier? How big a problem is this? What do we need to learn? Where should we look for suitable training?
Have you got any answers to these questions? If so, please share.
An interesting topic, thanks for raising this. I fully agree that the IT department is best placed to assess and consolidate all the many technology requirements and a lot of the business issues that we probably shouldn’t get involved but do. I also agree the easiest part of any solution is the technology, thats what we are paid to do and where our skill set lies.
I believe there are a number of different issues that impact the people parts of the problems, for instance:
Because they have a computer at home everyone thinks they are an expert yet have very little knowledge of the real issues that go on behind the scenes to keep a corporate network running.
We make the technology work look so easy – this in turn leads to high expectations of project delivery. While we will attempt to build the best solution within budget, time, technical limitations and other constraints, more often than not decisions regarding the end products are usually out of our hands. How fantastic would your computer system be given you no constraints of cost, time or resource etc! Most times the best than can be delivered is far from ideal.
There also needs to be a desire to change (you can lead the horse to water etc.) and often this is lacking amongst all levels of end user communities.
Even though expectations can be set, they are often severely misunderstood – a typical example is the time required to be dedicated to a technology project to make it work for the individual or team end user etc. The general expectation is that the computer systems should just work and be completely intuitive for all who use them (irrespective of skill level) – a bit like the utilities: turn on a tap and the water comes out, why can’t my computer system work the same way? If only the systems we delivered were that simple or required to perform a single task only.
People problems require emotional intelligence to overcome. Each person reacts differently to similar problems or challenges and they each require a slightly different approach to resolving. I think we first need to realise that people problems can take much longer to resolve and use up more resource time than you generally allow for the project. Many different approaches and experiences are required to find the right fit for the issue to be resolved. We need a huge pool of people, change, problem management resources to filter through to find solutions that may work and and then trial them and learn from your mistakes (btw, all too often mistakes are not allowed and the blame culture takes over which ends up killing all the good work you have achieved).
You can practice communications skills in classes such as The Dale Carnegie Course and organizations such as Toastmasters. Just learning how to understand another person’s point of view and then wording your position to fit that point of view goes a long way toward improving the communication between IT and the customer.
It’s likely to be the hardest part for the managers who don’t know the difference between management and leadership. WIkipedia page on Leadership is a good starting point for investigation. There are too many managers in IT today and too few leaders. Not only it creates massive overhead and information distortion, it has a demoralizing effect on work environment. Here is twelve distinctions between the two groups:
▪ Managers administer; leaders innovate.
▪ Managers ask how and when; leaders ask what and why.
▪ Managers focus on systems; leaders focus on people.
▪ Managers do things right; leaders do the right things.
▪ Managers maintain; leaders develop.
▪ Managers rely on control; leaders inspire trust.
▪ Managers have short-term perspective; leaders have long-term perspective.
▪ Managers accept the status-quo; leaders challenge the status-quo.
▪ Managers have an eye on the bottom line; leaders have an eye on the horizon.
▪ Managers imitate; leaders originate.
▪ Managers emulate the classic good soldier; leaders are their own person.
▪ Managers copy; leaders show originality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership
p3t3r1 highlights the people-related reasons why IT projects and endeavours fail or are more complex than everyone’s expectations. But there are two other, more incidental, ways in which IT finds itself up its neck in people matters, even psychology and politics.
Firstly, on the front line, the service desk frequently finds itself being the emotional punchbag for people’s frustrations, which just happened to be tipped over by a technology failure or challenge. Many support analysts probably feel qualified to write their own problem pages based on their experiences of councelling emotional users with relatively simple technology gripes.
Secondly is at executive and business-relationship level. The business is often not consciously aware of how complex and self-contradictory it is. IT gets to see this from a relatively objective viewpoint as we have the strategy and tactical business aims played back to us through many channels and many interpretations, and personal agendas. We end up with a massive array of conflicting needs and certainly nothing like a joined-up strategy that we can be aligned to. Pointing this out bluntly is not the path to popularity or success, but it is a massive oppotunity for IT and the individual to add tremendous value, if handled correctly.
I escaped the battlefield a few years ago, but there is an additional issue to all the things said before. My main perception is that – especially as from the 90ies or thereabouts – there is an increasing perception in the core business components of the corporation that IT is not, and never will be considered to be really part of the company as its not considered core business – even if a good, cost effective and flexible IT structure is crucial to the business’ wellbeing.
Therefore IT is continuously in a situation between hammer and anvil, high demands (very often from a business community that does not really knows its requirements or creates them on the fly) but on the other hand not taken altogher seriously because IT is not a member of the club called core business.
This is painfully felt at the level of service desks (see Dave’s point), but also with project management and service delivery in its widest sense and leads to all kinds of strange experiments.
Eventually, being completely outsourced, pointing out issues bluntly to the customer (Dave) is not the wisest path to continuity. On a shortterm notice it is probably better to slavenly follow the demands as it will keep you in business, but on the longer term you’ll be kicked out because of cost issues. As I said you are between hammer and anvil, where only the best will sneak out before the hammer falls.
Solution? Reconsider the position of IT in the grand scheme of business activities.
Unfortunately I see a lot of people on the “business” side of the equation who automatically equate “technologist” with “narrow minded, technology obsessed, possibly unwashed, engineer who cannot communicate and certainly doesn’t understand business let alone anything as involved as strategy”.
While such people do exist many of the people I meet who are “technologists” are acutely aware of the problems with the IT / business relationship, have taken the time to learn about business, are good communicators, do understand “the big picture” and do wash.
Unfortunately many people in technology have a low opinion of those in the business.
So the problems continue and both sides miss the opportunity provided by the other.
IT professionals need to understand the system’s strategic and tactical objectives and the value this brings to the business correctly and map these into corresponding features prioritized and implemented in the order of the benefits it can provide.
IT professionals should also be trained in business domain knowledge and skills as required in addition to technology skills which does not always happen.
Most of the successful systems and their implementations have had huge management support at various levels of business and IT managements which results in good will building and knowlege of criticality of the system among all concerned.
Strong user training and support in implementation and changeover are also key to the system acceptance in addition to good design and system delivery.
Yes, technology seems to be the easier part of it.
I think Archana apply demonstrates my point when he says “IT professionals should…”
I think a lot of IT professional DO understand system’s strategic, tactical objectives, the value this brings to the business and do correctly and map these into corresponding features.
I think many IT professionals ARE “trained in business domain knowledge”.
However, those on the “business” side do not recognise this and continue to treat IT people as if they are ignorant.
Second, why is it always the IT professionals who must do something? Surely its about time business folk recognized they need to play their part too. They need to understand the best way to use and manage IT.
You would not appoint an CFO who said “I don’t understand all this double entry book keeping” but it is acceptable to appoint CIOs who say “I don’t have an IT background, I intend to run IT as a business”.
In brief – play up the many strengths of IT professionals, speak of and treat them as professionals. Success in business is about recognising the full spread of skills required to keep the business on top form.
Early in my career, I decided that I loved applying technology to solve problems. I also decided that I did not want to follow the classic move to management that can isolate one from technology and make one’s focus the management of people.
This was a major contributing factor to my move from being an employee in “Corporate America” to running my own consulting firm that specialized in the development of custom software solutions. Over the years, I have had a chance to work with many different technologies, and apply the appropriate one to create innovative and unique solutions for many clients.
But, technology does not live in a vacuum. To utilize it effectively, one must understand the real “need” that is driving the work; and as an outside consultant it is critical that the knowledgte is transfered to the client so that the result can be effectively utilized and maintained.
The end result is that communication (listening, asking questions, learning, advocating, mentoring, et. al.) with people is really the most important part of what I do. Looking back over the 25 years since I founded the company, it is surely the single biggest reason we have survived when other firms have all disappeared.
Ironic; isn’t it?
I am a small business owner with an MIS background that melded technology with business. The reason for the rise of MIS programs years ago at universities was, in part, prompted by the very fact that managing technology required business, but not necessarily technical, skills. You try telling small business owners that business reasons should drive technology implementation and see the look on their faces!
I believe that education is a key component of dealing effectively with the issues that users face. For example, in any new application or system deployment, research has shown that if users are involved in the initial decision-making leading up to a new deployment, users are more likely to accept the new system and throw their support behind it. Such research results call for effective change management strategies to reduce educate users on the benefits that accrue from new application / system deployments.
As another example, in the area of information security, research again has shown that an educated workforce is less likely to commit errors that lead to security exposures. Additionally, security governance adds another dimension to the issue of dealing with users and keeping their computing activities from adversely impacting organizational resources.
I’m all in favour of IT staff developing people skills (especially those who are primarily customer-facing, obviously), and have met many who badly need such development.
On the other hand, it seems to me that business infrastructure is often maintained by people (in HR, payroll, PR and whatever) whose core competency should be their soft skills but frequently fall very, very short.
I have to agree that it’s not appropriate to assume that all the faults are on the side of the IT Crowd. I refer to that particular stereotype quite deliberately.
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