Are you in it for the ride?

A long time ago, someone told me the analogy that people in society, a business or a project all sit on a wagon. Most people just sit on the wagon and are there for the ride. However there are a few people that are in front of the wagon and actually pull it forward. And then there are always a few people behind the wagon to slow it down.

Over time I added that there are a few people standing on the wagon shouting and giving directions to the laborers upfront. These are the "important" people.

I think everyone can easily recognise the people that make the world go around. And you probably also know some people that are there just to slow things down without a good reason. You might think those bosses on the wagon shouting the directions would be politicians. Not directly my intention but yes, amongst politicians you will find those people as well. And those 'bosses' do not directly correspond with the bosses in the real world. Bosses are on the wagon, in front of it and also behind it.

Talking about bosses right now, one of the mothers on the football field last Sunday complained about her boss at work; how impossible it was to work with her, how incompetent she was and how she only seems to frustrate things.

I recognise this. In the past I have seen more of those people of whom you think "how on earth did they ever come into that position?". I explain that this is due to the lack of 'weight'. This makes them float to the top. People who are there for the ride and just make a lot of noise.

A little while ago I read an article ("Competence: Is Your Boss Faking It?" by Jeffrey Kluger, Time Magazine, Feb. 11, 2009 ) that people tend to think that people who make the most noise (talk the most) probably will know more. Why not? If you are not certain about something, wouldn't you listen to others instead of speaking up? The psychology of human nature makes them to become the "leaders" while unfortunately (as per article) there is no direct correlation with actual knowledge or skills.

As managers we are expected to have a broad range of skills. Take for example people skills. I am however still surprised that there are so many people in high places who lack any form of people management skills. It is so obvious, how could you have missed it when you appointed the person?

Unless you do a psychometric test, these aspects are always difficult to assess during job interviews. But even more problematic, how do you identify that a manager reporting to you has issues with his team? You might get a team member complaining to you about the manager, but how do you know that this is a valid complaint? Maybe the person is not performing well and this is his way to put the blame on his boss? Other people might not speak up because they're too afraid that this will negatively impact their own position. It is not always that people are incompetent in all aspects of their job and that can make it even more difficult to assess the situation.

The football mum unfortunately will have to deal with her boss for a while.

Make all content on websites editable

I have now again a few cases at hand where my team had to support a website originally developed and supported by vendors where content updates require software developers to make the changes.

In principle you should build a website so that all text and images, maybe a logo and buttons for submitting a form etc excepted, can be modified by the web authors. If you don't have this, you will rely on the developers to make content modifications to the website. This is far from ideal because this is very costly, requires planning and when you have urgent cases at hand it will just lead to stress between the business and technology team.

Unfortunately this ideal situation requires that you architect the site accordingly and accept the extra effort, time and costs upfront. When you are aware of these issues, you can plan this in but you need to look whether these upfront costs are warranted. If the website is expected to have a limited life span and during this time only certian sections of the site require updates, you can consider to leave the other parts as static HTML or hard coded in software. It will only become a problem if the website will live longer than originally planned or if more sections of the site need to be updated than as originally planned.

When you have outsourced the development, support and maintenance to a vendor, you will not have good insight how they will have built the website. If the vendor also is responsible for making the content changes, you will only see how they have resolved it once you take over the support and maintenance in-house. This can be a shocking experience.

The way around this is to QA the vendor's work regularly, not just at the end or when you get the handover. You can put clauses in the contract but it is far from ideal to involve lawyers when it has gone wrong. And it will. Involving lawyers and going to court will only be a lose-lose result. So you either you need to accept extra upfront costs or accept the risk. And since money is a scarce resource ...

Are CIO's becoming like CFO's or is it the other way around?

I received an email from one of our team members following an article in Delimiter he read and asked whether the IT managers were becoming more like the Finance manager or the other way around. 

The article was about the observation that CIO's at a round table conference were talking more about the business and business issues than about tools and technologies. 

My answer to this question would be that IT managers have changed. 

CFO's have managed IT and the CIO for decades now and not always that successfully. I don't say that a CIO can't report to a CFO but as we have been able to read now already for years it is important for the CIO to have a good direct relationship with the CEO. 

Finance has morphed over the ages from pure number crunchers to general consultants and the CFO has become one of the key figures in any organisation. 

IT is a younger profession and is heading the same way. As the article says in Delimiter,"it is a coming of age".

I think that there is too much specialism in both areas that it is important to have on the top leaders coming out of their own specialism. Both areas are critical to successful management of a business and both areas need have good knowledge of the business in order to be successful. CIO's are simply catching up. 

But as I wrote before, it depends on the context how you organise this:

http://hein-bouman.blogspot.com/2011/02/it-does-not-always-need-to-be-partner.html
http://hein-bouman.blogspot.com/2010/04/we-should-stop-talking-about-business.html