IT Manager Challenge: Bridging That Generation Gap

The workplace is a-changing. As more younger workers start to flood into IT departments (ok, “Millennials” if you must) a lot of what used to work from a management point-of-view has stopped working and this is leaving IT managers with more questions than solutions. There are roughly 80 million workers in this next wave and … Read more

Email And The IT Manager: The Good, The Bad, And The Deleted

As an IT Manager, how good are you at sending emails? I’m not talking about your typing skills, nor am I talking about how many of Microsoft Outlook’s 1,000,000 features you have mastered. Nope, what I’m talking about is how effective your emails are. Do they get the job done or do they just get … Read more

5 Steps To Help An IT Manager Find A Mentor

Mentoring is sorta like that networking thing. You know that it’s probably a good thing to be doing. However, you’re not quite sure how to get started with it and so it seems to always end up on your “should do” list where, of course, it never gets done. Whenever you read about someone’s success … Read more

What Should An IT Manager Look For When Hiring Employees?

Talk about confusing! IT managers are responsible for bringing the best and brightest into your organization. However, in the field of IT, just exactly what this means is difficult to pin down – we keep changing our minds! IT departments today look nothing like the IT departments of the 80’s, 90’s, and even early 2000. … Read more

How Can An IT Leader Change An Engineer Into A Team Player?

At my core, I am an engineer. I recognize this, I accept this, I am proud of this. However, during my career many mentors have been kind enough to hold up that damning mirror of self-vision and have allowed me to see myself as I was: an engineer’s engineer. One key characteristic of this part … Read more

How An IT Leader Can Manage Competitive Arousal In Their Team

It’s great to have an IT team that is full of go-getters. However, as with everything in life, sometimes teammates can be too competitive. When we let the heat of battle overcome our better judgement, then we’ve got a real problem. When this happens, we stand a very good chance of starting to make very … Read more

An IT Leader’s Guide To Managing “A-Type” Personalities

So we’ve talked just a bit about the dangers of having players in your department / on your team who get so caught up in something that winning becomes everything to them. It’s almost as though you were attending an auction and it got down to the last two bidders on something and they both … Read more

What Is An IT Leader To Do When Winning Is EVERYTHING?

So here’s an interesting issue that I’m sure that most CIO’s and IT managers would love to have: how best to mange over-the-top “A-Type” personalities? Hey, we all know folks like this (put that mirror down!) These are the people in our company / department / team for which winning can become more important then … Read more