Guide to

Managing
an IT Staff

an IT Management eBook
Contents…
Guide to Managing an IT Staff

This content was adapted from Internet.com’s Datamation and Enterprise Networking Planet
Web sites. Contributors: Scott Alan Miller, Sharon Gaudin, Charlie Schluting, Rob England, and
Mike Elgan.

2
2 Being an IT Manager: Joys and Headaches

5 How Could You Be a Better Manager?

5 8
8 Learn to Manage IT Staff

10 12 Tips for Managing Geeks

10 13 13 Information Workers Want to Be Free

 Guide to Managing an IT Staff

Being an IT Manager:
Joys and Headaches
By Scott Alan Miller

I
had a late night meeting recently with a software de- Driving home, watching to make sure that the sun wasn’t
velopment intern who recently came to work for us. about to peek over the horizon, I was contemplating just
We met at a coffee shop near where he lives, at 11:00 what makes IT and specifically IT management the best job
p.m. In most professions I imagine that going to a in the world. I’ve been a manager for a decade now.
meeting with a new staffer in the late evening would seem
odd but somehow, in IT, it seems almost normal. Being an IT manager means managing change. It means
staying technical, very technical, while also working with
We talked for hours. We talk- people. I am not a traditional
ed about project ideas, career manager, simply keeping the
goals, academic pursuits, and employees in line and seeing
ended with a two-hour archi- that everyone keeps working.
tectural discussion about the My job is to guide, to men-
new project he’ll be working tor, and ultimately, I believe,
on. Leaving our meeting at to inspire.
four in the morning, it was in-
vigorating to see him excited To inspire? Really? Absolute-
about software development ly. If I was to describe my job
and working in IT in general. in as few words as possible
I would say that my job de-
Moments like this one remind scription is to “inspire and in-
me of just how much I love still passion.” When pressed
what I do and how awful it I would probably add “while
would be to do anything else. providing gentle guidance
After 20 years in the field, I still and course correction.”
love the excitement and vari-
ety of working in IT and espe- I remove roadblocks. I pro-
cially of being a technical IT manager. vide assurance. I sign off on and accept responsibility for
potentially risky decisions. I shield from the outside world.
Seeing that passion in someone just entering the field is I facilitate creative brilliance.
exciting too. Hopefully, 20 years from now, that young in-
tern will be meeting a new intern of his own, late at night, My staff is a group of professionals. Brilliant, quirky, hard-
and reminiscing about his first time getting coffee with his working, self-motivated IT professionals — each carefully
boss — way back when. selected in the hopes of finding someone who brings both
technical skill and unmitigated drive to the organization.

2 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff
These are not people whom I need to manage in the tradi-
tional sense. These are people who need me to keep the
path open so that amazing productivity and cool, unique
solutions can just happen naturally.
This isn’t the HR department. This isn’t accounting. This is
IT. If you need me to watch over your shoulder all day long
to make sure that you’re still working then you’re in the
wrong field. I’m not here to convince you to do your job.
I’m here to make sure that you have the resources neces-
sary to do your job to the best of your ability.
From time to time I am called upon to engage in techni-
cal pursuits. I may help with system engineering tasks, re-
spond to an emergency when a server is down, help with
a software architecture discussion, perform a peer review,
and give my opinion about the merits of one technology
over another.
I am tasked with leading by example. I read books, mag-
azines, Web sites, e-zines, blogs, and listen to podcasts
from IT Conversations. I do this every day. When my junior
staff see how much time I spend educating myself after
having been in this industry for so long it helps them to
see how much there really is to learn and how exciting that
process can be.
In IT we can never stop learning. Our industry is one of
constant change and keeping up with it is possibly the
most critical skill that we can develop. I strive to create
a culture where we learn from and support one another;
where we grow together as a team.
Challenges (My BlackBerry…)
While I love being an IT manager, I am also aware of the
dark side of working in the IT field and of being an IT man-
ager in particular.
The hours can be, and often are, long. Brutally long. The
very nature of working in IT means that your work tends
to become integrated with your life, making it difficult to
separate the two.
3 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
IT management is not a “leave the office at the office” kind
of career and stress follows you home. Vacations can eas-
ily become nothing more than working from an alternative
location involving a hotel and your family enjoying Disney
World — while you work at a laptop and have room service
bring your lunch.
IT management has a natural level of stress and urgency
that exists in few other fields. When HR or Accounting has
an emergency it is seldom a “right now” kind of emergen-
cy. IT, on the other hand, is almost always involved in situa-
tions involving a need for immediate attention.
It is not uncommon for IT-related problems to impact large
segments of the business, making them almost completely
unable to work and, in many cases — like losing a Web site,
database, or other business-critical application — may re-
sult in a situation that can be measured in dollars lost per
minute.
As an IT Manager I am tied to my BlackBerry. I sleep with it
beside my bed and check it on every occasion upon which
I might awaken. I then check my mail thoroughly first thing
every morning and check it as I go to sleep at night. Some-
times I even keep my BlackBerry under my pillow.
E-mail is only the first tie between the office and myself.
There is also Twitter and RSS. With staff and clients around
the world IT never sleeps. Even the idea of downtime can
be stressful in and of itself, making it very difficult to re-
lieve the pressure.
IT is demanding in other ways as well. Working in IT means
always staying on top of the latest technologies, trends,
policies, and techniques. While this is exhilarating it can
easily become overwhelming. Being an IT manager is not
something that you “possess” but something that you
maintain. And you must maintain it. Every day you have to
work to keep up with the general pace.
The IT field rewards those who keep pace with change but
punishes harshly those who fall behind. Staying on top of
such a large industry is difficult at best and doing so while
avoiding burnout is practically an art form — one that few
ultimately master.
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff
Of course, I can hardly talk about the dark side of IT with-
out taking into consideration the current economic condi-
tion. Like many fields, IT is often hit excessively hard by the
whims of business and the natural changes in economic
climate.
One year IT professionals are overwhelmed with the num-
ber of job offers and opportunities only to be left on the
side of the road holding a cardboard sign, “Will Code for
Food” the next. Not that I think IT has it worse than most
professions. The media loves to glorify IT when times are
good and scold it when times are bad. We are the whip-
ping boy and the poster child, heroes, and villains.
It is difficult to ascertain the exact state of the discipline at
any particular moment as the field is so large and poorly
defined and statistics so misleading. Even as an industry
insider it can be impossible to reach a consensus about
whether we are currently in rich times or fallow. Either
way the opportunities tend to be there for the making –
IT provides a potential for moving against the market in
general.
No career will ever be perfect and for someone like me
choosing the path of passion and creativity over one of
stability and safety is an obvious one. I wouldn’t have it any
other way. Balancing life at work and life at home is, and
will continue to be, challenging.
4 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
It is not only a challenge because of my workload or hours
of availability but also one of constant social upheaval.
When I first began working in IT, e-mail was very new
and just beginning to take its place in business and in
academia. Within a few years e-mail became ubiquitous
and the landscape changed forever. Now we have instant
search, massive online documentation repositories, social
networking, and instant messaging within and without the
corporate environment. Portable always-on connectivity
keeps us connected to this new social communications
structure that blends our jobs into our lives as easily as our
meals and our sleep.
Working in IT continues to be both exciting as well as scary.
If it wasn’t scary I don’t believe that it would be so excit-
ing. No matter how much I work or how much pressure is
applied to me, I am fortunate to wake up each day feeling
excited that what awaits me will allow me to grow, learn,
explore, create and (I hope) enable others to do what on
their own would be impossible. IT is, above all else, a field
whose purpose is to promote the potential in others.
I have no idea what tomorrow will bring to IT, but I am con-
fident that it’ll surprise me and challenge me. That might
be what I look forward to the most.
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff

How Could You Be a Better Manager?

By Sharon Gaudin

I
n an up-and-down economy with directives to con- that kind of training and, actually, that’s why the individu-
trol costs and headcounts, IT managers have a host al clients I have who are getting coaching are paying for
of pressures on them. And most of the managers it themselves. These people are failing in their roles as
­dealing with all of this have very little real manage- managers.
ment training.
Q: What’s the biggest mistake that you see managers
That could be making a hard situation even harder — for making on a regular basis?
both the manager and the employees, says Pam Butter-
field, president of Business Success Tools, LLC, a consult- I think one of the biggest mistakes managers make is that
ing and management coaching company based in Man- they’re not setting aside time to be a manager. When you’re
chester, Conn. not a manager, you’re being paid to get work done. When
you’re a manager, you’re get-
Butterfield talked to us about ting paid to define the work,
the biggest mistakes that to make assignments, to mon-
managers make, how to tell itor the progress and quality
if employees are challenged of what’s being done, to help
or anxious, and how to help people who aren’t performing
workers better handle all the address what the gaps are. A
change that’s coming down lot of managers are not com-
the road. fortable giving feedback and
receiving feedback. It’s easier
Q: Are most managers to ignore those things.
trained or otherwise pre-
pared to manage people? Q: What’s the main thing
that people could do to
No, not at all. I know when I make themselves better
first started out I didn’t have managers?
a clue that there were things I
could learn to do that would allow me to be a good man- People need to focus on the area of goal setting and then
ager. I was technical and I had pretty good people skills. assigning resources to work on the things that are most
That didn’t make me a good manager. I didn’t know how important. You have limited resources today so you need
to give feedback to people. I didn’t know how to manage to use them judiciously. Very often there’s a gap between
conflict. I didn’t know how to build teams. I didn’t know the what people are doing and what they need to be doing to
difference between being a leader and a manager. I didn’t actually be successful. Managers have a hard time closing
know how to evaluate people. that gap. Very often people are good at solving technical
problems but not at solving people problems. That goes
Fortunately, I worked for a company where I got excel- back to the lack of training and the lack of experience.
lent training. I don’t see a lot of companies giving people There’s also a lack of good managers to learn from.

5 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff
People also need to seek to understand before jumping
to conclusions. I’ve learned to become a good question
asker. It’s amazing what you find out when you listen to
people. Often the thing you thought it was it’s not at all.
Q: Is it easier to be a manager in good economic
times, when hiring and budgets are both up?
There’s an awful lot of pressure on managers these days.
The rate of change is so great right now. You’re trying to
get people who are bombarded by change to get today’s
work done, while you’re trying to get people in a posi-
tion to handle the change that’s coming down the pike
tomorrow.
Part of the challenge for managers is there’s not enough
time in the day. They may have the best intentions but they
just don’t have time. One of the ways to do this is to look
at everything that has to be done, including the people
management stuff, and prioritize. Another thing is to learn
how to delegate. Every time you don’t delegate a task,
you’re losing an opportunity to take someone else in the
organization and teach them something.
Q: The economy seems to be slowly improving. Are
workers happier and more confident or is there still
anxiety because of the recession?
Absolutely, people are still anxious. There’s a reason they
are nervous. This goes in cycles. Downturns. Upturns. It
will all happen again at some point.
Q: What’s the best way to handle these anxious
employees?
If I’m an IT manager, I’m going to help my people be able
to be very comfortable with change. There are various pro-
grams that companies provide. It’s change management for
the individual. People are afraid of change because they’re
afraid the change will hurt them and they won’t be able
to make the transition successfully. Feeling like you’ll be
6 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
able to land on your feet means understanding what your
skills and abilities are and how you can use them in a new
setting. As a manager, I’ll help my people understand their
strengths and talents so as change comes along they’ll be
able to adapt and still be able to add value.
Q: Sounds like you might be setting them up to
think they should be looking for a new job. Is that a
concern?
There’s a little danger there. The other part of that is I treat
them very well so they won’t want to look for that next job.
I’ll look for opportunities to give them new and different
projects. I’ll give them stretch assignments — neat proj-
ects. I’ll spread the wealth a little bit and let the good and
the great employees have good projects to work on. I’ll
give them a chance to be creative.
They won’t all want that. There are certain highly technical
people who are able to adapt to change pretty quickly and
then others who resist it. As a manager, when I’m looking
at a workforce, I might lead with people who are more able
to tolerate the risks of doing something new and different.
There are certain people who are really happy to go out
and try new technologies. There are others who would be
happy to write COBOL the rest of their lives.
Q: How do you tell the difference?
There are assessments that I use that will measure a per-
son’s stress in the workplace and indicate whether they
change quickly or slowly. The one that I use is a behavioral
assessment put out by Target Training, Inc. If I don’t have
money for that, what do I look for? I’m going to look for
what people are reading. What are they learning about?
Do they learn? Are they interested in the latest and the
greatest? People who tend to be innovative and creative
are interested in the next best thing to come along. Are
they good problem solvers? Are they curious?
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff
Q: How do you tell if someone is anxious?
There are specific behaviors that I look at. There are dif-
ferent degrees of resistance. If people are resistant to
change, they tend to be overly critical. They’ll be silent.
They’ll find reasons why it won’t work. They’ll agree very
easily. “Yah, that’s a great idea.” “Yah, do it.” But they’ll
fade into the background and never help you do it. These
are all signs of different degrees of resistance. I need to
start communicating with people fairly early in the process
and sell the problem, not the solution. Very often when
we’re implementing a change, top management works be-
hind closed doors because they’ve identified a problem.
Then they spring the solution on people. You need to edu-
cate people that there is a problem and you need to do
something about it. It’s a communication plan, really.
7 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
Q: What communication mistakes are managers
making?
If you keep introducing change after change after change,
you nickel and dime people. They start waiting for the next
shoe to fall. You’ve got to bundle changes so it’s not that
constant drip, drip, drip where they never get a moment’s
rest.
It’s really tempting to want to avoid being in an uncomfort-
able situation so you send out an e-mail or a memo. You
think, “Well, I told them. It’s off my plate.” You need to sit
down face to face with people and talk with them. Become
comfortable with the discomfort. That has to be part of the
communication plan. If that’s the way you communicate
with people — in a consistent, compassionate, believable
way — it can do amazing things. It can develop trust. It can
rebuild it. Memos can’t do that.
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff

Learn to Manage IT Staff

By Charlie Schluting

W
hy is managing technical people difficult? When the technical staff is given information about the real
Some would say techies are socially inept, reasons behind a change, they can often provide valuable
and simply can’t communicate well. While insight, assuming someone is willing to listen. More than
that may be true in some cases, saying listen, actually: The manager needs to be able to parse
so doesn’t help managers deal with techies any better: It the argument for what it’s worth. In a situation where the
just defers the problem. Here are two pieces of advice for IT staff is simply complaining about having to implement
bridging the communications gap. something new, their arguments against the change will
likely be 90 percent complaint and 10 percent valid argu-
First, managers must be open, honest, blunt, and candid ments. An effective manager ignores the complaints and
with their subordinates. Every employee wants to know ponders the valid points, as opposed to getting upset and
what’s going on, but that es- simply saying “because we
pecially applies to technical told you to.”
people. They also want to
know that they’re being given The other half of our first point
accurate information. Second, claimed that bluntness and
managers must be humble. candid discussions are bene-
There’s nothing worse to a ficial. In many situations this is
techie than a manager who true, but it’s most important in
just pretends to know some- performance reviews. There’s
thing — techies see right nothing worse than having to
through that. “lay off” an employee when
he had no idea that his per-
That first point covers a wide formance was sub-par.
variety of topics. Let’s break it
down. When someone makes an
avoidable mistake, confront
“Open and honest,” and to him about it. Make it known
a certain extent “bluntness,” that the mistake was unac-
refer to dissemination of information. Management should ceptable. Conversely, when someone does something
be honest about what’s happening in the company, and well, parade that fact around the office as if the president
managers should feel comfortable sharing the real reasons just got impeached. Employees who know exactly where
behind a decision. Everything from organizational changes they stand are able to either correct their actions, or settle
to the company’s financial standing is important and rele- into their rut, realizing they’ll never be promoted. When
vant information for all employees. In the IT world, people it comes time to let the latter go, there are really no hard
are frequently asked to implement some vague technol- feelings at all.
ogy and they’re given no reason at all besides “someone
requested it, without really knowing what it is.”

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 Guide to Managing an IT Staff
Finally the second point: managers must be humble. This
goes far beyond simply admitting when you don’t know
something. Being an effective manager sometimes means
playing dumb.
It is almost unbelievable how much friction a manager
who pretends to know technical details can cause. Dur-
ing a secret project a few years back, where an outsider
was forced to work within my group, it became clear very
early on that the outsider didn’t know what we were doing.
Instead of admitting it, she attended every meeting and
pretended to be a productive member. In the end, when it
came time for reviews, everyone called her out for claiming
to contribute equally. When it was all said and done, she
said, “I’ve heard stories about dealing with techies before,
but I didn’t think they were really true.”
The stories are all true. Technical people will be hell to
work with if you undermine their hard work and years of
study by making uninformed decisions or by claiming to
know something better than them. Have you ever noticed
experienced managers asking their employees to explain
something that you thought the manager already knew?
There’s a reason for that.
When employees are forced to explain the way something
works, they often come to new realizations during the dis-
cussion. Putting a plan into words, so that someone less
technical can understand it, forces the implementer to
think about it from many new angles. This works much the
same way that writing a speech doesn’t prepare you nearly
as well as practicing it out loud.
9 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
How does asking someone to explain what they’re doing
translate into “playing dumb?” Well if they already assume
you know something, they will skip the gory details. The
details are what truly matter, though.
It may seem counterintuitive to think that technical people
want to talk to a manager who doesn’t know much. Em-
ployees may even seem to get annoyed when they have to
explain things. This is where your technical skill can sneak
in and cause something wonderful to happen. Often, the
techie won’t realize the error of his way, and you can easily
point it out after he’s described the plan. It doesn’t even
take much pre-existing technical knowledge, just the abil-
ity to manage. Technical staff certainly won’t think less of
their manager for asking tons of questions — they actually
enjoy teaching, most of the time.
It also pays to realize that the technical staff has put years
of work into developing its skills, and they really can’t imag-
ine that any manager has done the same. They seek con-
tinual improvement and refinement of their skills, so much
so that they’d probably be just as happy with a raise as with
an all-expense paid trip to a conference.
The moral of the story is to treat technical people the same
as you’d treat everyone else. They will, however, respond
better to certain styles of management, and they will nev-
er respond well to a manager who claims to know more
than he really does. A thick skin and strong attitude are
required to deal with technical staff effectively, but once
you understand what makes them tick, a whole new level
of efficiency can be obtained.
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff

12 Tips for Managing Geeks

By Rob England

H
opefully most readers will agree that people
working in IT can be broadly categorized into
two groups: those who are oriented around
action (process, business, projects) and those
who are oriented around things (hardware and software
technology, documents, data).
I once interviewed a UNIX systems programmer in a bank
about the machines he “owned.” I asked him what ap-
plications ran on them. He started listing HP-UX, Oracle,
OpenView… “No, I said, applications; what business pro-
cesses?” He looked surprised and slightly embarrassed,
because he had no idea.

The term geek is usually at- For the health of the busi-
tached to the hardware-soft- ness it’s most important that
ware group, so while it’s not management understand the
universally viewed as a posi- geek mentality and manage
tive term, we use it here to de- appropriately. This is a huge
scribe the IT staffers who are topic beyond the scope of
more interested in technology one article. Please do make a
than the business drivers to study of it as effective geek-
use it. management rewards the ef-
fort. In the meantime we can
Because of this group’s fo- help by pointing out the most
cus, they tend to lack respect important threats to watch out
for many of the imperatives for from geek culture.
that matter to the business.
In the extreme this is manifest 1. Assessment of Risk
as undisguised contempt for Geeks tend to underestimate
the sordid business of mak- risk outside of their technical
ing money, derision of project domain because they are dis-
managers’ obsession with time missive of all but the compo-
and completeness, and disgust with management’s prag- nents that matter to them. Make sure assurances that it
matic compromises and expediencies. To the geek mind will be all right are backed up with some evidence. Get a
only the core is important, and there is only one way to second opinion.
implement it: the correct way.
2. Return on Investment
Those who run the business lack affinity for technology so
This may not even be considered in a request. Geeks think
they need the geeks, but they get frustrated by sloppy
the company should spend whatever it takes to achieve
procedures, slipped deadlines, tactless communications,
a technically perfect outcome. Get architects or business
mystifying documents, warped priorities, lack of respect,
technologists to translate geek-speak and evaluate the
non-compliance, and stubborn resistance. Geeks, in the
business benefits.
minds of business types, just don’t get it.

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 Guide to Managing an IT Staff

3. Compliance with Policy, Rules, and and everything fits together, driving for deadlines, coping
with adversity, expedient adjustment, keeping records, re-
Standards
porting and analyzing — these are not geek skills. PMs are
Geeks don’t like bureaucracy, and they don’t like dotting
a specialized group of unique people: hire them.
“I”s and crossing “T”s except when comparing technical
specs. Get someone else to make sure it meets all the non-
technical requirements. 8. Politics
There are those who make things happen, those who watch
things happen, and those who say “what happened?” Do
4. Business Impact
not expect geeks to be attuned to corporate politics, or
To geeks, the business is an abstract entity “out there”
even to know what is going on in the business at large.
that does not understand what is important, nor the bur-
Make sure their manager is filtering their communications
dens they have to bear. Implement change control over in-
and proposals. A geek will demand a new SAN just as the
frastructure and have a non-geek review and approve the
business reports earnings 50 percent below estimates, or
timing and implications of changes.
complain that the team is under-utilized and not appreci-
ated just as layoffs are being planned, or tell the new CIO
5. People who moved across from Finance that the users are idiots
Known to geeks as “wetware,” people are perceived as a
and never know what they want anyway.
major impediment to their effective functioning, second
only to security. Buffer your end users from geeks with a
Service Desk. Invite them to meetings when you have to.
9. Estimating
Everything looks like “a couple of days” to a geek. They are
Don’t expect them to wear silly hats or go rafting or other
always 90 percent done. It is the last bug. How anybody
“team” activities. And don’t let them near…
who spends their life immersed in technology (the home
range of Murphy’s Law) can be so optimistic seems mys-
6. Management tifying until one recalls that process and action and time
Geeks make bad people managers. Do not allow them
are off their radar. Double everything and get the project
to ascend by sheer force of seniority into management or
managers to look under the hood.
even team-leading roles. Even worse, do not commit the
cardinal sin of pushing them into management roles they
do not want (usually through lack of other career paths).
10. Hoarding Knowledge
To geeks, knowledge is personal power, not a group asset.
Sometimes geeks experience a “road to Damascus” rev-
Technical cleverness and indispensability are their antlers,
elation and suddenly begin to understand the other half.
their tusks, their dominance display. Once they return from
Most don’t.
conferences or training courses, any intellectual property
to be disseminated into the rest of the organization will
7. Project Management need to be surgically extracted. Systems of Byzantine com-
Geeks make bad project managers. Recall they are thing-
plexity will be constructed and nobody else will know how
not action-oriented. They do what they must to get it
to operate or fix them. Make sure you reward people who
done. The actual doing is an ordeal to be endured and
share knowledge (“of course she’s going to the conference
minimized. Only the essentials matter, but the technical
again this year — look at all the good training she ran for
essentials must be done right: they can’t be rushed. Coor-
us after the last one”). Assign young apprentices to study
dinating other people, ensuring all the bases are covered
at the feet of the master. Decline transfers and promotions
citing undocumented systems that will fail without them.

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 Guide to Managing an IT Staff

11. Greed and Envy In Closing…

My old boss, Charles Wang of CA, spoke of how most
business decision-makers are driven by the old Fear Un-
certainty and Doubt, but technical decision-makers (or
recommenders) are driven by Greed and Envy. FUDGE.
Geeks are technophiles. Watch out for the vendor-crafted
business case that conceals the only real driver being that
somebody wants one because everyone else has one.
12. Starting with Stuff
There is a wonderful IT implementation model: People
Process Technology, in that order. Geeks implement Tech-
nology, in that order. Get business analysts, architects, and
other damage controllers involved in any project, especial-
ly one that is a geek’s idea. Find the stakeholders (the geek
won’t have) and see what they think. Don’t let the geeks
rush off and talk to vendors until the people and process
aspects are sufficiently advanced that the organization can
specify what it needs from the technology.
Geeks are sensitive, delicate creatures, easily ruffled, in
many ways helpless. They can also be infuriating, petu-
lant, stubborn and seemingly thick-headed, sometimes
destructive. But if you take the time to understand them,
know their priorities, and find their motivators, they can
be effectively managed to give them personal satisfaction
while returning great value. Perhaps we can explore that
more another day. For now you can use these 12 watch
points to keep them behind the fence, to move breakable
objects out of the way, and to minimize damage to the
business.

12 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff

Information Workers Want to Be Free

By Mike Elgan

I
T policies lock down company PCs and dictate which
browsers can be used, and whether or not IM is al-
lowed. Corporate or management policies often ban
sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other time
wasters.
But what if employees were allowed to do whatever they
wanted using whatever software they wanted? Would pro-
ductivity go up or down?
tasked with understanding how people in different parts
of a company do their jobs, IT managers often can’t ap-
preciate how profoundly certain tools can improve how we
work.”
Excess multitasking is another productivity killer. Research
at Stanford University found that people who multitask
most, multitask worst. In other words, the more they do it,
they less skillful they are at it.

Most sites and software that are The question is: Why do people
banned or blocked are restricted multitask? Some people may sim-
for good reason — usually for ply enjoy the thrill of information
security, to cut costs, or to im- overload. Others might believe
prove productivity. It’s true that they’re working harder and get-
malware threatens. American ting more done. But I think many
companies waste more than $4.4 multitask because they’re being
billion a day on lost productiv- directed externally by bosses,
ity, according to Global 360. But company policies, and having
what if we’ve got it all wrong? to perform extra tasks to get
What if restricting employees for around the software forced on
the company’s benefit has the them by the company. They feel
opposite effect? they have multiple priorities and
multiple obstacles, so the solu-
After all, security and productivity tion is multitasking.
aren’t end goals, but only means
to a business end. Any company’s larger objectives are to When people can direct their own work, they tend to focus
succeed in the market, compete effectively, and maximize on one task at a time, which gets them into a state of mind
revenue. called a groove, or flow (depending on whether you prefer
hippy or yuppie jargon). And that’s the most productive,
How Restrictions Harm Productivity creative state to work in.
Farhad Manjoo, author of the book True Enough: Learning
To Live in a Post-Fact Society, wrote in Slate that locked- Career analyst Dan Pink pointed out in a TED talk that for
down computers “infantilize workers… foster resentment, many kinds of work, autonomy (along with feelings of mas-
reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, tery and purpose) are far more conducive to productiv-
worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively.” ity and creativity than the more conventional carrots and
Then he zeroed in on the problem: “Because they aren’t sticks.

13 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
 Guide to Managing an IT Staff
A University of Melbourne study found that workers who
engage in what researchers call “Workplace Internet Lei-
sure Browsing” — visiting Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and
the like — are more productive than those who don’t. Dr.
Brent Coker, from the university’s Department of Manage-
ment and Marketing, pointed out that “firms spend mil-
lions on software to block their employees from watching
videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Face-
book, or shopping online under the pretense that it costs
millions in lost productivity.” His research shows that all
that money may actually harm productivity.
The bans on “Workplace Internet Leis…” — oh, let’s just
call it what it is: slacking off — are just relics from a bygone
era, or at least an entirely different kind of work. If some-
body is loading bricks, the brick-loading stops when the
worker starts doing something else. But when someone
thinks for a living, and needs to use mental resources to
solve problems, the mind continues to work even during
slack time.
Some highly productive workers even do this deliberately.
When met with hard problems, sometimes it helps to go
scan Twitter and Facebook for a few minutes, then return
to the task, hopefully with new insight.
As we transition to an ever more complex, more competi-
tive, and information-based economy, companies should
be thinking about a long transition to a Results-Only
Work Environment (ROWE). In its purest form, a ROWE
workplace doesn’t care what you do all day, whether you
go to meetings, or even whether you show up at all. The
only important thing is the quality and effectiveness of
your work.
14 Back to Contents Guide to Managing an IT Staff, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2010, Internet.com, a division of QuinStreet, Inc.
Now this sounds like a slacker’s paradise, but I can tell you
that it’s not. As a writer, I already work in a ROWE envi-
ronment. My editors and publishers don’t care what I do
all day, what time I get up in the morning, what kind of
browser I use, or whether or not I stop in the middle of my
work to watch a video on YouTube.
Since only results matter in a ROWE environment, the bar
is set higher because there are no other criteria. Although
my editors don’t care, I get up really early, use what I be-
lieve is the fastest and most efficient browser, and work
hard to organize my time as effectively as I can. If some
slave-driver were micromanaging me and restricting me,
I’m certain the quality of my work would suffer.
Every conventional workplace has a few staff members
who show up on time, attend all the meetings, follow all
the rules, and do what they’re supposed to be doing, and
who contribute very little. The highest achievers and those
who create the most value for their companies are prob-
ably doing so despite restrictions, rarely because of them.
It’s time for C-level executives to start thinking about how
policies — especially restrictions on software use or Web
site visitation — may be collectively damaging productiv-
ity. Maybe the most effective policy is to figure out how to
remove, rather than create, barriers and restrictions. May-
be it’s best to just get out of the way and let employees do
what you hired them to do.