2 Signs Your IT Manager Needs to Go

I just read Jay Forte's great post, "Checklist: Are You Settling for Second-Place Employees?," on his Power Performance blog on Bizmore and thought...Great, I'm not the only person seeing this!

Second best or "good enough" is the mantra — the mode of operation — of so many people in business and it seems to have trickled over into IT. Ironically, today I came across one of the best quotes I've seen in a while that ties right into this. W. Edwards Deming once said “It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.” This is where a lot of people in IT fall short.

I see two issues here: First, many people are in IT that shouldn't be in IT. Be it an internal promotion, a hire based on ignorance, or the classic "I sort of fell backwards into IT and do it because no one else will," there are lot of people in IT who probably shouldn't be. This will usually surface in the form of poor security, minimal technology utilization and continued system outages.

Second, there are those who are just there for the paycheck. This isn't specific to IT but rather a more general HR problem. However, it's harder to detect with IT employees because, frankly, a lot of people are afraid to question them.The outcomes are usually the same: lack of proactive system maintenance, gaping security holes, inability to integrate IT with business processes and the like.

There are two clear indicators that you might have the wrong person in IT:

1. Conversations are one sided...his/her way or the highway (à la the Nick Burns character on Saturday Night Live) and all about the bits and bytes rather than the business issues at hand. IT is about the business and for the business. The inability to communicate IT at that level is nothing more than tech support to "keep the joint running."
2. The value brought to the table is in terms of how many certifications or degrees the person has, and often, the number of years they've worked in the field. It's not about their certifications or degrees. Furthermore, only good experience counts.

I recently wrote about surefire ways to derail your career in IT and this is no different.

The bottom line for hiring IT expertise — or managing what you've got — is to read between the lines. Look at who the person is as much as what he or she claims to know. What is he or she doing to stand out above the noise in IT and to become a better person and, thus, a better employee? That's who you want managing your information systems. There's just too much at stake.