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IT leadership 101 - Part 3 of 3
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Third in the Series I call IT leadership 101 because these were the ideas I discovered during my career in IT, graduating from Hard-Knock University (not to be confused with the University of Hard Knocks). These are ideas that any information technology worker might want to know about before they make a career out of IT. If I have missed any ideas that you know to be true for you, please let me know.
The University of Hard Knocks is an honorary society recognizing persons who have made a success of their life without the benefit of higher education. UHK, as it is affectionately called by its 1,200 living alumni, meets annually on the campus of its sponsor Alderson-Broaddus College, in West Virginia.
Mantra of Persistence:
You must appear perfect
in word and deed.
Unrealistic? So what.
Who said life was fair?
- Your parents are responsible for what was, you are responsible for what is. If your life was not a bed of roses, get over it. Every day is a chance to make it better. Not discounting what you have been through. But if you want to work in IT, you have to bring all your focus forward. Real life is progressive and iterative (meaning it builds on the work of the day before. So it will take time to correct all that was wrong. Do it anyway.)
- Mastery of self must occur before you can master anything else. Self-control means control of your habits, your mind, and your body. The most powerful thing you can do for yourself is to maintain your self-control especially when everyone around you is waiting for you to lose it.
- If you are out of sorts; get help. There is no shame in seeking support. The IT industry can undermine your self-esteem and morale. If you are psychologically stressed, IT work can drive you to the brink in record time.
- If you say it, it must be so. Your word is law. Keep your word, your integrity is everything.
- When in doubt, say nothing. Everything you say will be remembered. When you say nothing, you appear wise and inscrutable. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." No truer words were ever spoken. Remember them.
- The most powerful words you can say are: I don't know. But I will find out. Become a master of research!
- Maintain attention to detail. In my article regarding the Sidekick data failure, I discussed the idea of technology complexity. Attention to detail is critical when even tiny mistakes can render an entire network or service, for thousands of people, out-of-commission. Take the time required to get it right. Know the steps and even if the Furies themselves were breathing down your neck, trace the steps, ensure stability in your technological environment and never trust to intuition, if you have facts you can use first. Leave intuition to the psychics.
- Rest; use your vacation. Learn to walk away. Many IT types have an inability to walk away from a problem. This dogged determination is how they solve the impossible issues that end up on our desks. But it leads to stress, wear and tear on our minds and bodies over time, rendering us less effective over time. Don't let this happen to you. Take time out. Plan for it. Then do it. You will be better for the time away. (Plus, it lets them miss you, especially if you are great at your job. Familiarity often breeds contempt.)
- Do cerebral things not IT related. The greatest minds in the world have often discovered that things apparently unrelated to your work can sometimes inspire you to find new ways of solving problems. Rejuvenate your mind by doing things that don't require a keyboard and a mouse. Read a book, take up painting, do crosswords or Sudoku, learn a new language, play a musical instrument... When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
- Get at least one physical hobby or sport that puts some wear and tear on your body. The sedentary life of an IT guru can add inches to your waist and pounds to you behind. Your mind is only as strong and resilient as the body that houses it. (Weight-lifting, aerobics, running, martial arts, bicycling, swimming, ultimate Frisbee, touch football, soccer, to name a few.) Get your heart rate up and keep it up for 30-50 minutes a day. Your life depends on it.
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Mantra of Challenge:
Love IT as the complex and dynamic craft
that it is.
- You must enjoy the challenge of finding the straw in a needle stack. You are about to become part of the largest, most distributed neural network on the planet and possibly the greatest technological wonder ever created by humanity. Savor the moment. Done? Now get to work. With that membership, you will also have the great responsibility to ensure that whatever part of that network you build, patrol, protect, guide or create, that you do it with a vision of the future, being mindful of present circumstances and with an awareness of what has gone before. The picture that you see here is a digital representation of parts of the Internet created by the Opte Project. There are 50 million links to other networks represented here. Welcome to the machine! Neural network, anyone?
- It will, if you choose it, be the hardest job you will ever love. People will tell you that what you do is not work. Do not listen. This career is as challenging as any being done anywhere:
- IT is as challenging as medicine, because your patient will sometimes span the world, be in more than one place at a time, and have thousands of discrete elements, with millions of parts and billions of lines of code holding it all together. IT changes faster and more consistently than medicine ever has. (To be fair, medicine may soon accelerate the pace now that they are embracing IT in their diagnosis, management and coordination of information. More work for you...)
- IT may be as hard to handle as law, because there are no precedents for every event. Each time may be the first time that circumstance has EVER been seen. What was true this morning may no longer even be relevant by sunset. Human laws develop at a geologic pace compared to the shifts that technology witnesses every year. (On average, law firms are incredibly slow when it comes to utilizing the full power of IT. I am amazed to see how many law firms are still running Windows 98 or NT.)
- As difficult as architecture and engineering because what you build must offer stability and adaptability and is constantly under attack from threats within and without and yet must make the people using it feel safe and productive. Depending on the IT you are responsible for lives may hang in the balance. Be vigilant. IT is ever-challenging and has constantly expanding horizons.
- Read, read, read. If you are not a strong reader, I recommend you work on expanding your speed and your literacy, because a strong and fast reader has a decided advantage in IT. Technical publications, both in print and online are your friends. Take an 8 hour work day, once a week and do nothing but read technical journals or publications on that day. Your productivity will still be higher than anyone who doesn’t.
- Mastery of this craft makes you rare amongst humans. Even the most sophisticated and educated often pale when confronted by a computer on their desk and a demand to use it. And despite our recent economic misfortunes, work in this field will likely continue to expand to those who stay at the forefront of their fields of expertise.
- There will never be fewer computers on Earth than there are now. They may be virtual computers under unknown operating systems but the number of computers is likely to continue growing for the foreseeable future. And on the off-chance that the number of computers actually goes down, the skill level required to manage, understand and control those computers will likely be greater than ever. The only people who would have a chance of controlling or working with them would be people who already have the core fundamentals at hand. That would be you.
- IT will offer you impossible deadlines, put you in positions to affect the highest stakes (you have four minutes to save the world...) pair you with some of the strangest and often brilliant people, keep you working long and sometimes nonstandard hours, and ultimately provide you with immense satisfaction if you let it. IT will give you the satisfaction of creating something out of nothing whether that be a circuit board, a processor, a network, an application, a database, or a website, you will be creating something from the realm of ideas (Logos) and bringing it into the world. Create something the world needs they will pay you handsomely for it. (Sometimes, even if the world didn't need it, you will get paid too, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.) Know that when your skills mature (in 5 to 7 years), you will be able to call yourself one in a million and mean it.
A Final Thought:
If you don't love IT, you will leave it in 2-4 years for something easier, less stressful with a greater sense of acknowledgment from the masses. Your powers will diminish somewhat but you will always remember what it was like to have your finger on the pulse of the world. If you are just getting started in IT, know that the first part of the race will seem the hardest. Stay with it. It gets better. Really.
Good luck out there.
Recommended Reading - Yes, some of these books are a bit dated but that does not mean they are not good for you. And some of the material may be a bit controversial but just because it disturbs you, does not mean it isn't right; work with it. I will add to this list over time. I read a lot of books...
Not Necessarily IT - Just damn good books for anyone wanting to get better at what they do and stay sane doing it.
The Success Principles - Jack Canfield
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey
Dictionary of Cultural Literacy - E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, James Trefil
How to Say It at Work - Jack Griffin
Temporary Sanity - Charles C. Manz
Strengthsfinder 2.0 - Tom Rath
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene
Blink, Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
Future Shock, Powershift, The Third Wave - Alvin Toffler
The Complete Idiot's Guide to MBA Basics - Tom Gorman
What Makes the Great, Great - Dennis P. Kimbro, Ph.D.
Teach Yourself Project Management - Phil Baguley
The World is Flat, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century - Thomas L. Friedman
Unstuck - Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro
Online IT Resources - There are many more of these, I will add to them as time permits. Come back often.
Whatis.com
CNET.com
TechRepublic
Wired.com
TomsHardware.com
Mashable - The Social Media Guide
About the Author: Thaddeus has a WordPress technology and science commentary blog called Storm Warnings: A Matter of Scale and can be reached at ebonstorm(at)gmail.com.
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