Do senior managers run and hide when they see you coming down the hallway, , , or are they eager to hear what you have to say because they know it’s going to be valuable?
Which type of IT manager are you?
Here are what I consider to be the key components that lead to IT success and can help you gain respect throughout your company!
1. Understand business needs and issues
You can’t succeed unless you know what to work on and the answer to this lies in understanding the business needs and issues of your client. This is the first part of an IT discovery process.
2. Understand your IT capabilities and capacity
Managing client expectations requires you to know what your IT team can do and how much you can do. This is the 2nd part of an IT assessment discovery process.
3. Create a vision
It’s important for people to know where you are headed. Once you complete an IT assessment, you can develop an IT strategy and gain agreement and commitment from your senior management team. This will insure you are in sync with company needs, , , a critical piece.
4. Establish credibility
Doing what you say you will do not only creates credibility, , , it also creates trust from all around you. The key to doing this is to deliver projects successfully, , , on time, , , within budget, , , and that meet your client’s needs.
5. Deliver business value
Every project you undertake should deliver some type of business value, , , if not, you should reconsider whether it is an appropriate project to spend money and effort on. CLICK HERE to learn more about business value.
6. Communicate in business terms, not technology acronyms
When you talk in technology terms, your clients do not hear you. They literally turn you off and begin wondering how long this conversation will last. Learn to communicate in business value and financial terms and they will not only hear you, , , they will understand what you say.
7. Over deliver
Position your team to deliver more than expected. To do this, your commitments must be conservative with room to spare. No one gets upset when you complete work faster than expected or less expensive than forecast. See what happens when you don’t achieve what you outline.
8. Track and communicate IT performance
Clients won’t know how your team is performing unless you share the news. Use a Project Initiatives Portfolio to track how good you are in delivering projects successfully. LEARN MORE
9. Give your team credit for success and take blame for failure
Your employees will literally walk through fire for you when you give them credit for IT successes and take the hit for failures. Coach employees one-on-one for improvements needed but take responsibility as the manager for the problem. Not only will your people respond to this, , , so will your clients.
10. Over communicate during a crisis
Something will break sooner or later. When it does, over communicate the status of the situation and keep your clients out of the dark. If they don’t know, , , they think you are not working on their issue aggressively enough.
Summary
There are many things an IT manager must do to succeed. Executing this list of ten tips will help you gain tremendous respect within your company.
ITLever™ 