Author: Jenn Steele

On New Brooms

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So the classic perception is that the new boss can–and will–make sweeping changes to an organization and staffing.

I can’t say this is very wrong.

I happen to be fortunate that my new staff is excellent, but there aren’t enough of them. And the systems? Well, let’s just say that we need to tweak them a bit, but I have a great foundation on which to work.

But I was having a conversation this morning with my senior network engineer, and we made the observation that I have about 6 months until I won’t be able to easily make big changes. So I need to move fairly quickly.

I plan to take the following steps:

  1. Assess
  2. Propose
  3. Execute

I’m almost done with step 1 now, and I hope to do step 2 next week. One thing I plan to do a bit differently, however, is that I will first get feedback from my staff on the proposal. After all, they already know the systems and players.

On Being a New IT Director

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I started a new job on Monday, and I sent this email to my new geeks:

Here’s the deal with this email: I want to set up individual meetings with you, but I also want to give each of you the opportunity to email me the answers to some of the questions first, so we don’t have to take up too much of your time at the meeting itself. It looks like my calendar is up to date with all two of my appointments, so please schedule a meeting with me for 30 minutes to 2 hours–whatever amount of time you’d like to have to chat, ask and answer questions, etc.

Here are questions (for the first eight or so, it might especially be useful for me to have your emailed response. Otherwise, I’m perfectly fine with just chatting about the rest.):

  1. What are your scheduled hours, and what hours do you actually usually work?
  2. Do you carry some sort of device with which you check your email evenings and weekends?
  3. When is your birthday (month/date)?
  4. What is your favorite cake from Rosie’s? (or let me know if you can’t/don’t eat sugar)
  5. What is your favorite caffeinated beverage?
  6. What is your favorite alcoholic type of beverage? (or let me know if you don’t drink)
  7. What’s the best bribe a boss has ever given you? Nothing illegal, please. Please note that the use of the word “bribe” is used in a joking manner in the first sentence of #7.
  8. Does it bother you to have someone (that would be me) swing by your office periodically during the day to make sure you’re still breathing and that your head hasn’t exploded?
  9. Did you understand my sense of humor in the previous two questions, or am I just overly tired?
  10. What does your typical day look like with regard to your tasks, duties, and stress level?
  11. What are your assigned responsibilities?
  12. What extra responsibilities have you undertaken?
  13. Is there anything that you really should be doing but simply cannot get to due to staffing, time, burnout, etc.?
  14. What are your current projects?
  15. What does your to-do list look like?
  16. What do you want your current job to look like (yes, in a perfect world)?
  17. What do you want to be when you grow up?
  18. What do you see as the next step in your career?
  19. What changes would you like to see in the IT Department in the next year?
  20. What do you definitely NOT want to have changed in the IT Department?
  21. What would you like the IT Department to look like in 5 years?
  22. What kind of boss would you like me to be?

Any questions? I’m happy to answer the first few if you’d like…

Jenn

On Honesty and Perception (and Humor. Oh, my!)

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Last night, on my way out of class, my prof told me to enjoy my new purchases (I’m starting a new job Monday and needed a bit of wardrobe refreshment). I replied, “Thanks. Now I just have to hide the receipt for the shoes from my husband.”

Her reply was, “Because of the principled leader that you are, of course.”

Now, my MBA program* has this tagline: Educating Women for Power and Principled Leadership. I’ve done my best, through electives, to really emphasize the leadership piece of mine–effectively concentrating in “principled leadership”. I also mention in a few of my posts (like that one On Honesty) that I hold myself and my staff to high standards of principled behavior.

And my husband already knew that I had spent a ridiculously huge amount on this pair of shoes–I called him right after I bought them.

I found myself thinking, “Does she really think that I wouldn’t tell my husband how much I spent on a pair of shoes?” (This coupled with the thought of, “Well, this time is at least better than when I bought that pair of $460 Dior sandals but thought they were $160 until I got the credit card slip thanks to messy handwriting on the label…”)

I think I can take a lesson from this: be careful with my jokes! I know that, at core, I’m a very honest person who would never hide the cost of shoes from her husband, but have I ever made that clear to my prof? Probably not–the class has 40 people in it, and I love cracking jokes and making controversial statements.

How people might perceive me is directly related to what I say. I think I might try to be more cognizant of that in the future.

*With which I’m almost done–one more class, nothing left to turn in! Woohoo! Ahem. That last paper ate last week, hence the blog hiatus…

On Flex Time: How to Fail

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In my last post about making flex time successful, I talked about some best practices that I find make flex time a beautiful thing for everyone involved. Now I’ll chat about how to completely fail with flex time.

  1. Be grouchy about it. Your employees aren’t stupid, and they know when you’re unhappy about something. If you resent employees who have flex time, you’ll damage their morale, and give other employees good reason to be grumpy about their co-workers’ arrangements.
  2. Don’t listen to complaints. Let’s say you have an employee who works weekends and takes off Thursdays and Fridays to take care of the kids. This arrangement seems fine, and then you have a huge roll-out that is scheduled to go live on a Thursday. This employee, a vital engineer on the project, might not think that he needs to be there on that Thursday. People complain, and you just shrug. The roll-out is harder, morale suffers, and people start resenting the flex person. This is sub-optimal for teamwork, to say the least.
  3. Don’t plan for it. Make sure you remember that someone has a four-day week when you’re planning projects and schedules. You cannot always depend on that person to show up on every Friday to make up for your poor planning–wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of flex time?

I’m sure there are many other creative ways to fail at flex time, but I’m hoping that these two entries will help you avoid them.

On Flex Time: Making it Successful

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I blogged a bit about flex time in my post On Insomnia, but I’ve been thinking about what makes flex time successful (or not!), and I thought I’d post my thoughts here. This post is about what to do to help make flex time successful (my next will be on what might cause flex time to fail).

  1. Bilateral flexibility. Both the employer and the employee must be flexible. I had an employee once who worked a 4-day 32-hour work week, and did not work on Fridays (when daycare was closed). However, if I ever needed her to come in on a Friday for a large project or emergency, she put her son in back-up care or called on a relative and was there. Likewise, if she ever wanted to trade a Tuesday (or other day) for a Friday, I let her do so as long as the work allowed it. The bilateral flexibility made this arrangement a resounding success.
  2. Core hours. In order to facilitate teamwork (and I’m not sure there are many modern work environments that don’t need teamwork!), core hours are vital. Team members need to know when they can find each other for questions, brainstorming, etc. I held core hours for my last department to 9:30-4:00, which were hours when everyone’s work schedule overlapped. If I were working in a software company, I might set those hours to 11:00-3:00 in order to handle both my night owl programmers and the crazy early birds who need to pick their kids up from school.
  3. Don’t give flex time if the job isn’t flexible. While it’s admirable for all companies to want to grant flex time, sometimes it just isn’t happening. Nursing shifts have to start and end at specific times. Utility trucks have to all roll out at a certain hour. The help desk has to be covered from 8:00 AM-8:00 PM.
  4. Be honest during the recruiting process. If the job isn’t flexible, don’t tell a great candidate that he or she might be able to negotiate it later. Be up-front about expectations during the initial interview in order to recruit and keep great employees (this goes for much more than just flex time).
  5. Don’t only grant flex time to your favorites. If someone in a certain job has flex time, you have to be prepared for everyone else in the same role to ask for it. If you only granted it to one person due to special circumstances, be honest and communicate the circumstances (within reason–don’t disclose private HR issues) to that person’s co-workers.

Stay tuned for my next flex time post on mistakes I’ve seen (not just the flip side of the five best practices above–honest!). I figure it’ll come out next week…

On Maturity

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Overall, I think that maturity is overrated. That is, if we define maturity as being boring, steady, and un-creative, which is how most “mature” people I’ve met in the business world define it. If we define maturity, however, as being well-balanced, able to have fun, able to be creative, and able to get the job done while enjoying it, then I think we should all be more mature.

I fell into the trap of assuming that I had to be mature (by my first definition) when I first became an IT Director. I stood up straight and suppressed some of the odder aspects of my personality. I probably wasn’t much fun to be around, and I guarantee I wasn’t having much fun–I lost a lot of weight from the stress.

Then I hired a computer training specialist. Who had many years of law firm experience and who had served in the Army Reserves for even more years. He was about 6 years older than I, and really knew how to be professional. He seemed well-adjusted, and the users loved him.

Then he brought in a wooden bear that, when you lifted its head, pooped M&Ms.

My wacky side loved it, but since it was right outside the HR Manager’s office, I held my breath and ignored it. One day, I sheepishly poked my head into her office, and she said she thought it was a hoot.

A hoot?

Turns out I didn’t really know the real meaning of maturity. A truly mature person knows how to have fun at work. Get the job done? Absolutely. But even more important is getting the job done while enjoying being there. You’re happier. Your team is happier. Staff stays longer at their jobs, and you only have one scotch at the end of the day (and that because you actually like scotch).

Okay; so making staffing decisions by allowing them to duel it out with flying monkeys at 10 paces might have been a bit much, but…

The Grammar Geek: Over Their!

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I completely forgot my weekly “Leading Geeks” post, but since I actually get more hits on this blog for the Grammar Geek posts, I figured I’d write this one.

Most of you know about the classic there/their/they’re confusion:

  • There: is a pronoun that refers to a place that’s not here :).
  • Their: possessive pronoun meaning something belonging to them (whoever they are).
  • They’re: a contraction of “they are”.

And yet people mix them up all the time. My theory? Carelessness. I’ve actually caught my fingers typing the wrong one randomly (Fingers? Meet brain. Brain? Fingers.). If I don’t re-read my work, I sometimes find that I’ve sent an email using the wrong form!! The horror!

If you never really knew the difference, now you do. If you’re wondering why your fingers and brain occasionally disconnect, I can’t help you, but let me know if you ever figure it out (I have a theory it has something to do with habit). Just re-read before hitting send, print, or publish, and you’ll catch most of your mistakes.

The Grammar Geek: Death Throws

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Recently, I’ve seen a lot of posts that start, “We’ve been in the throws of an upgrade to Exchange 2007…” or something like that. They keep using that word. I don’t think it means what they think it means.

What they really mean to say is, “We’ve been in the throes…”

Yes, throes.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary, here’s the deal:

  • Throws means a lot of things. From pitching a ball to intentionally losing a game to hitting someone. While upgrading to Exchange 2007 might feel a lot like being on the receiving end of all of these, this isn’t quite the word to use.
  • Throes only has two definitions: either a pang or spasm, or a hard or painful struggle. Sound a bit more like being in the midst of an upgrade?

Glad you all understand now. Please stop making me twitch.

On Managing Expectations

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My apologies to my faithful readers who expected a post yesterday. Somehow that whole week starting on Tuesday thing really threw me off, and I’m swamped this week, with something due for the BU course for which I’m adjunct faculty and the Simmons course I’m taking right now.

Being late for this post got me thinking about how I manage expectations whenever I lead geek projects (and, having no PMO at any of my last organizations, I managed projects for a HUGE percentage of my time).

Here are my top five ways to manage customer and team expectations:

  1. As I mentioned in my post On Scheduling, first build as accurate a time line and due date as possible. Build in all known issues and be up-front about warnings or traded priorities (this last very important for internal customers).
  2. Communicate!!! Your geeks MUST know relevant due dates in order to prioritize and schedule themselves. Your customers MUST know if you’re likely going to miss the agreed-upon date, and they should know as soon as possible in order to plan. Likewise, geeks and customers must know and agree on specifications, requirements, and deliverables.
  3. Make nice with your geeks. If a geek has to give up weekends or family time in order to hit the deadline and specifications, do something nice in return. I mention in my post On Trading that I once traded a bottle of vodka for a sacrificed vacation day during a crisis.
  4. Make nice with your customers. When I was a customer and a vendor had to miss a scheduled due date, I’d occasionally get taken out to lunch or receive a box of cookies for my staff as a thanks for my patience. Obviously, follow your company’s rules and regulations for things like this.
  5. One of my favorite things to do while managing deadline expectations was to estimate a new deadline and then beat it. It’s all about managing perception–if I haven’t communicated with you and we come in a week late, you’re really annoyed. If I tell you we’ll be two weeks late, send you a bottle of wine in thanks for your patience, and then come in only one week late, you’re pleasantly surprised.

Perception counts. Manage it well by communicating and playing nice.

The Grammar Geek: Cousin It

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My husband asked me to write about dangling prepositions, but I read some posts today on various groups and sites that had its/it’s confusion, so I’m going to get on my soapbox about that instead.

The word, “it”, can be problematic when made possessive. See, it doesn’t have an apostrophe in its possessive form (see? Just like that.). It’s just one of those things you have to memorize.

Wait, what was that? Oh, I just used “it’s” to mean “it is”. “It’s” can also mean “it has”. It’s a contraction (read: It is a contraction.).

To make things more difficult, my last job was in an Information Technology department, abbreviated “IT”. Unlike the pronoun, “it”, “IT” follows normal proper noun rules. If a telephone belongs to the IT Department, it is “IT’s telephone”. If IT is going out drinking the email subject reads, “IT’s going drinking!”

To recap:

  • its telephone = the telephone belonging to it
  • it’s a telephone = it is a telephone
  • IT’s telephone = the telephone belonging to Information Technology
  • IT’s a telephone = the Information Technology department is at the bar, letting voice mail pick up all the calls.

Okay, so technically, IT should be abbreviated “I.T.” to eliminate confusion, but that’s WAY more annoying to type…