Category: leading geeks

Dear Geeks:

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(Before anyone gets excited, this is not intended for or aimed at any specific geek or non-geek who has ever worked for, around, or with me. It was originally inspired by this and this, although it isn’t the same format. Thank you.)

An open letter to geeks, from a geek leader:

I like you. I like working with geeks. You’re intelligent, have odd senses of humor, are creative, and usually shower. I chose to move into geek-dom, and, once here, decided to stay. Eventually, I became a leader. I know some of you don’t quite understand why I would want to do that, but perhaps you can attribute it to a management gene or being dropped on my head as a child (or maybe hitting a house with my head going 20 mph when I was in 2nd grade, but I digress).

But here’s the thing: I still think you should know some stuff.

  1. I’m human. I make mistakes. Shocker, I know. Do me a favor and tell me, rather than letting me look like an idiot, okay?
  2. I experience political pressure. Which, in turn, sometimes makes me tell you to do things you think are stupid. And sometimes I can’t even explain why. Please ask, though. See #1 for the reason you should ask.
  3. If we don’t work in an IT/software company, please learn how to talk non-geek to the, well, non-geeks. Actually, this applies even if we do work in an IT/software company.
  4. You have this job in order to provide value to the shareholders of the company. Either you make the stuff or do the work that makes money, or you support the people who do. Shockingly, very few companies will pay you to just sit around and be geeky.
  5. My top priority is to run the department according to #4. That’s why I have the job. They don’t pay me to just sit around and be management-y.
  6. I want to have fun. I want to be a team. But #s 4 and 5 have to come first. Doing both at the same time is optimal, but sometimes we won’t have fun. I know it sucks.
  7. I care more about you as a human than as a geek or a cog in some corporate machine. Does this sound counter to #s 4, 5, and 6? Yup. It’s a balancing act. See #1 for why I mess it up sometimes.
  8. My job as a manager is to enable you to do your job. Your job is to accomplish the goals I set as a manager and the goals of the company. In my world, you and I work for each other.
  9. But I’m still a manager. If I excuse myself during off-color conversations, it’s because I’m trying to be appropriate. Especially since we’re probably different genders.
  10. The way this all works is that we all act like adults. You do what I ask you to do without my telling you how to do it, and you ask me for help or push back when it seems odd, strange, or impossible. We communicate. We don’t kvetch about each other without first discussing the problem face-to-face (or at least phone-to-phone if we’re a remote team).

I think we can all figure this out, really. It’s a matter of respect and priorities.

Sincerely,
Jenn

P.S., It’s okay to shoot the flying monkey into my office. Just be warned that I’m easily startled and might shriek…

On Misery

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Ever notice that a lot of geeks seem pretty miserable? You know, down-in-the dumps, put-upon, generally grouchy? Well, according to this article, 1/4 of geeks in small and mid-size businesses have suffered verbal or physical abuse at work, many work hours outside business hours (uh, duh!), and some are looking to leave the field. While I’ve never seen physical abuse, I’ve heard some pretty impressively horrifying help desk calls, where the geek technician is personally insulted for problems that he or she did nothing to cause.

And while I understand that users are frustrated beyond belief when they can’t do their jobs due to technology, it’s definitely demoralizing to hear someone say, “gee, IT has a problem AGAIN.” Well, yeah. We hate it, too. And none of us wants to have a problem AGAIN. And we’re not perfect. And we’re sorry. AGAIN. (And one or more of us have probably pulled an all-nighter or three to fix it. AGAIN.)

So I don’t wonder that geeks are miserable.

However, I don’t actually think it’s all externally motivated misery. Oh, there’s reason enough to sit around and be miserable, but I think there’s a better way to deal with it.

No, it’s not to drink heavily. Honest!

If you’re a miserable geek, I challenge you to ask yourself the question, “What would it take to make me happy?” And then answer it. Honestly.

I did that myself this past week, and was shocked by my answer. There were really only two things: make one change at work, and see friends more often. That’s it. Oh, sure, I’ll be happier with more stable systems, a laptop that actually works, and all sorts of other things; but really, there were only two things that I could think of that would change my attitude radically.

So I ask you, gentle geek and non-geek readers. What would it take to make you happy?

On Training

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My first technology job was as a computer training specialist for a health and human services company. I was terrible. I’ve been under the impression for the past decade or so that I was terrible because I dislike telling people how to do something more than once.

Turns out that I was wrong.

I was a terrible trainer because I designed, built, and taught my classes around the way I personally like to learn: If you briefly show me all of the features of something, I’ll figure out the optimal way for me to use it on my own. Don’t tell me how to do every little thing methodically–I’ll get bored and pissy.

Many geeks are exactly like this, making it fairly easy for me to teach fellow geeks (see above about the not like telling folks how to do something more than once). Unfortunately for me as a trainer, this is not exactly like normal human behavior. Normal humans (and I realize I’m wildly over-generalizing) seem to want to actually know the best or recommended way to do things, and they’d like step-by-step instructions.

Woah; shocker.

This is exactly what the all of the wonderful trainers who have worked in my departments have done. They figure out the best way to do a task (or the best way for our users to do a task) and design, built, and teach their classes accordingly. Everyone they have trained has loved them and has gone back for more classes or individual help time and time again.

I have to think more about this. And, when I deal with users, I need to learn NOT to say, “You can do it this way, or this way, or this way, or that way.” Instead, I need to say, “There are many different ways to do this, but the best way is to…” and go through it step-by-step. My favorite way to teach? Heck, no. But I’m a big fan of effective, and I believe that this will help me communicate more effectively with non-geeks.

On My Values

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My values as an IT Director and as a human being:

  1. Everyone is equally deserving of my respect (until they do something pretty extreme to lose it). My staff, my co-w0rkers, the end-users at my firm, my family, complete strangers across the world, and absolutely everyone is a valuable person to me. My references to “geeks” or “users” are not meant to be condescending in any way.
  2. I shoot straight. I value complete honesty, and hold myself to that standard. What I say is what I mean; there is pretty much never a hidden meaning. One drawback is that I might not “get” that others read negative meaning into my statements.
  3. I work hard. I am an incredibly driven person. If I don’t pay attention, I will work myself until I am absolutely sick. Do you see a tweet at 10:12 AM? Chances are that I took 30 seconds to tweet between tasks, but since I’ll work through lunch and far into the evening, I hope you don’t begrudge me that 30 seconds. Do you see a blog post at 10:13 AM? Well, chances are that I wrote it at some obscene hour in the middle of the night and set it to post during business hours so that more people would see it.
  4. I take care of my staff. I rarely ask anyone to work harder than I push myself, and I usually have much more sense when it comes to their sanity or health than I do with my own. I also consider it to be part of my job to get to know who they are inside and outside of work. Maybe you’ll come across a non-work conversation once in a while, but as I mention in my post On Geek Socialization, this is a good thing for the team and the firm’s IT service.
  5. I care about the customers. I have my job so that I can provide the best service possible to the end-users at my firm. I call them “users”, not to be condescending, but because that is the common term used in IT, and this is a blog for and about leaders of geeks.
  6. My family is important to me. I almost always put work first, but I’ve learned that there are certain things I need to do in order to keep my family speaking to me and keep myself sane.
  7. Laughter is important. I like to have fun at work. Heaven knows, we all spend enough hours there… I go into more detail in my post On Humor.
  8. I have feelings. Yes, they get hurt sometimes. Especially since I’m a generally positive person, and I greatly dislike it when people misinterpret things that I do and say as hurtful. I get stressed sometimes. I make mistakes. I’m human. I try to apologize and move on.

As a blogger, I should mention that none of the geeks mentioned in any post on this blog is a real geek. Do you think you see one of my staff here? Sorry, but you’re wrong. Maybe something might resemble something one of them did one time, but it could just as easily be based on a news article or anecdote from a colleague.

On Good Management

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Recently, I was reading an Inc magazine column by Joel Spolsky on Servant Leadership. The first page of the article made sense to me. Other than thinking, “Yuck–toilet cleaning,” and then, “Okay; way too much info on bolts and plaster dust,” the first page made sense to me, because it talked about leading by example. Clicking over to page two, however, is where the article hit a couple of discordant notes.

First odd note: Joel pulled his CFO off of an important customer-facing project in order to hang blinds and demonstrate to his staff that it’s management’s job to help their employees get work done. Is that management’s job? Absolutely. Was pulling the CFO off a customer project in order to demonstrate a point a good idea? Not so much. In pulling the CFO, Joel told his staff, “What happens inside this office is more important than customers or making money.”

My problem with this is that it shows an inherent lack of balance. I firmly believe that staff, customers, and revenues need to all balance each other out in order to keep morale up, keep people working, keep customers happy, and stay in business. Is it tricky to maintain this balance? Yes. Does it look to me like Joel knows about and maintains this balance? Certainly not from his actions with the CFO.

Second odd note: You want to run your company like a research university? Really? The goals of a company (create value for the shareholders; don’t go under) are really not the same as the goals of a research university (education, research, scholarship). In a university, there’s also a wide divide between the “haves” (the research faculty) and the “have nots” (the administrative staff who “gets stuff done)–do you really want to create such a culture divide in a company. Especially in a start-up?

It’s hard enough sometimes to be part of the non-legal staff in a law firm (although my current firm’s attorneys do an excellent job of treating IT with respect and like human beings). Once upon a time, however, I was a medical secretary at a university. Let me tell you, the class divide was gigantic, and it was quite clear that I wasn’t empowered to do a thing other than file, schedule, answer phones, and gossip in the lunch room.

Once I got through those two giant issues in the article, I found myself wondering about Joel’s two management trainee examples. It looks, to me, like he was looking for lead engineers or architects, and probably missed true management potential. Good managers and leaders don’t necessarily have the greatest ideas; they just know how to enable others to get the job done Joel said this at the beginning of the column, but his management examples don’t support his statement. The “good” example was of someone who decided that his way was the best way,and dragged everyone along for the ride. Not my style. Effective sometimes, but also not servant leadership.

So I had to wonder about the “bad” trainee. Was he truly waiting for the title, or was he busy building relationships with the developers in order to get stuff done in the future? Was he not “thinking about new features we should develop” because he already identified that the developers already had great ideas? Was he working with the developers to flesh out the benefits of those ideas, thereby winning the developers’ trust behind the scenes? Was he building a stable foundation such that he could step into a true leadership role upon getting the title?

We may not know the answers to these questions, and each leader has a different style and idea of leadership and management. I can tell you, however, that I won’t be modeling my style on Joel Spolsky’s. I want to work for the business, inspire my team, and recognize good background work in my staff.

On Assumption

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Friday morning, I woke up with a horrendous cold. My throat was sore, my sinuses were stuffy, my ears hurt, and my nose couldn’t find the “off” valve on the snot spigot. (Hope you weren’t eating…) I couldn’t sleep, and my brain was as stuffy as my sinuses. I decided to stay home, since I was non-functional and felt pretty crappy.

Mid-morning, I had to troubleshoot a minor (but extremely annoying) issue that some of the users were having. I felt like it was a Sisyphean task with my stuffy brain, but got it done. The next issue, however, I could not in any way solve, and I had to leave that to my extremely capable staff.

Obviously, I found it frustrating that I wasn’t operating at 100%. I knew that I had disappointed people, who were hoping that I had some insight to add to the technical challenge.

After my nap, I realized that I tend to assume that my geeks will always be operating at 100%, and so do our customers (the infamous “users”). And this is a fundamental fallacy that many leaders tend to follow, because not everyone can be 100% all the time. In fact, in today’s stressful world, it is probably rare to find someone at 100% any part of the time.

I haven’t yet figured out a way to communicate this to the users (“Please be patient–we’re human and trying our best, but we can only do so much” doesn’t play well), but I can certainly keep it in mind while leading my geeks.

New About Post

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I realized my first one was way out of date:

Having the misfortune of sharing a name with a porn star (boy, did that shock my father when he Googled me!!), I realized that I wanted to look at my online personal brand and start building it. Then I realized that I cared less about personal branding and more about sharing my thoughts with the World. My thoughts on leading fellow geeks or complaints about grammar, that is.

My name is Jenn Steele, and I am a Leader of Geeks.

I am the director of information technology at Morrison Mahoney LLP. I hold an MBA from the Simmons School of Management (2008) and a B.S. in biology from MIT, with a minor in expository writing. Prior to Morrison Mahoney, I was the director of information technology at Donovan Hatem LLP from 2002-2007, and the senior applications specialist at Burns & Levinson LLP from 2000-2002. I also have held positions in the health and human services industry.

I live in Waltham, Mass. with my husband and utter lack of any other living things (pets, plants, children, etc.). My hobbies include fine wine, single malt scotch, physical fitness, science fiction television, and epic fantasy novels. I have an obsession with figuring out what motivates people, and tend to concentrate on scientists and technologists. I have a severe Blackberry addiction with no plans for rehab any time soon, much to my husband’s chagrin (although I did take it off vibrate mode and now only check it every 20-30 minutes or so while at home).

Words that have been used to describe me include:

  • Refreshing
  • Straightforward
  • Honest
  • Intimidating
  • Inspirational
  • Odd
  • Funny
  • Intelligent
  • Blunt
  • Perceptive
  • Weird

My speaking engagements and articles include the topics of interpersonal conflict resolution, social networking, professional development, and business disaster recovery/business continuity.

My Myers-Briggs type is ENFJ. This likely gives me an amusing perspective on geek life.

My goal in life? I want to lead geeks. Or lead those who lead geeks. I think that the general mindset of those who choose to go into technology is, uh, different, and thus requires more thoughtful leadership. My personal strengths are in strategy and leadership. Apparently, I have been accused of having people skills and a sense of humor as well. As such, I can be a liaison between geeks and Other Folks.

I also blog for Simmons at http://www.simmons.edu/reconnect/jenn-steele/.

Enjoy!

On Postitive Attitudes

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As I head towards the bus on a normal evening’s commute, I pass by a homeless gentleman selling Spare Change newspapers. Since I usually have reading material or use my Blackberry on the way home (yes, I’m on a bus–drivers aren’t in danger), I don’t want the newspaper when I give him money, but he gets me to take one anyhow. How? He asks nicely.

He tells me in a positive, friendly voice that he’s been there since 6:00 AM (and it’s more than 12 hours later), and he only has a couple more to sell before he’s done. He then chats about how he heard it was below freezing in Maine this morning, or how everyone seems tired from watching the Red Sox last night.

I keep stopping and giving him money. I keep taking that paper that goes straight into the recycling at home. Why? Because he’s pleasant to deal with. After a long day, a friendly word and an uplifting little conversation really makes me smile.

This is something I attempt to teach my user-facing geeks. I know it’s tough to work a Help Desk, since you only interact with people when something goes wrong or they need something from you, but having that positive attitude and relating to them as fellow human beings can actually make the geek’s job easier. It can make the geek’s job easier because the person on the other end of the phone will be more likely to treat the geek politely the next time he or she has a computer problem.

As a leader of geeks, I have to make sure that my geeks know that they should come in and vent to me when they get frustrated rather than take it out on the users. That helps them to stay positive on the Help Desk. But even more effective is letting them get to know the users as people. I encourage them to go to firm social events and say hello to people in hallways. Unfortunately, the users themselves often ignore the geeks, but that’s a post for another day.

On the Blame Game

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I pride myself on not playing the Blame Game. I tend to say, “I don’t really care who caused the problem, I want to know two things: how to fix it, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

A few weeks ago, however, I really wanted to play it.

Why did I want to play the Blame Game? Because I was MAD. I was angry. And I wanted someone to pay for it. I wanted them to know exactly whose actions caused me this pain, and I wanted them to be penalized for it.

Wait, that’s not how I normally work. That is, in fact, antithetical to how I run my department. But this was outside–I wasn’t running the show in this case.

This experience gave me a bit of insight into what I’ve experienced from bosses, users, attorneys, and even my father: when you’re mad, you want someone to pay. As a leader, I have to be on-guard for this from myself, especially with the people that I lead. As the head of an IT Department, I have to realize where the Blame Game is coming from when people either inside or outside the department.

By understanding, I will find it easier to empathize and guide the conversation away from blame and towards a productive solution. By understanding, I can explain to my staff what’s going on outside the department so that they can understand. By understanding, I can guide situations away from blaming and towards fixing.

I guess getting angry and wanting someone to pay for it taught me something. Go figure.