My car was being repaired on Wednesday, so I took the bus home from work. Fortunately, the main bus terminal is one block from our IT offices in Appleton. Unfortunately, the closest the bus gets to my house is over a mile a way.

I jumped on the bus looking forward to getting a little exercise with a crisp fall walk. By the bus arrived at my stop it was snowing hard and snow was accumulating on the sidewalk. I was feeling so sorry for myself I almost didn’t notice the person that got off the bus at the same time. When I did, he was smiling and trying to catch my attention. I returned the smile he went on to tell me that he was so happy to see the snow.  It turns out he is a college student, on an exchange program from Guatemala, learning Business and English. He had never seen snow before. We shared much of the same path and time and weather seemed to disappear from my list of concerns as we had a pleasant conversation as we walked. Seeing his joy in what I was dreading completely changed my attitude.

At work attitudes are so powerful. Not only does a manager set the tone with their attitude and non-verbal signals. But all employees’ attitudes have so much influence over how a meeting is perceived. I value every employee’s opinion and when they appear uninterested or disagreeable, I cannot help be affected by that. Luckily, the folks I work with are supportive people.

Being a good listener and bringing a sense of excitement to your work is powerful. When I was relatively new to the workforce I remember listening to a fellow employee present some information. Whenever she missed a fact I would shake my head no. After a while I realized this was having a negative on her presentation (duh). Since then I always try to be a good listener. If someone is presenting and I am not expected to engage them in dialogue, I look them in the eye, I shake my head affirmatively and I smile. I know this puts people at ease which allows them to be their best.

I am in the process of a significant IT Reorganization.  The goals of the reorganization are:

1. make IT Operations more reliable and
2. improve the overall efficiency of the IT team so we can complete more projects (the demand keeps increasing).

One of the new IT leadership positions is a supervisor to manage the work of support techs in each of our 5 IT regions. As you would expect, the candidates are primarily the existing support techs. I have had the greatest time talking to these men and women about their interest in the position and their ideas to provide end users with a better service. They are talented, bright, optimistic people.  It has been a real energy boost for me.

For all of their raw talent, most are new to management. Providing them good mentorship will be key to their success.

Now there are libraries filled with books on management philosophies. But, that would require me to travel to a library, or to read a book.  Instead, I chose to watch some reality TV on Bravo. Tabatha’s Salon Takeover follows “celebrity hair stylist”, Tabitha, as she travels across the country helping struggling salons. It is my guilty pleasure.

The owners of these salons are usually in deep debt and losing money. Much of what Tabatha does is address poor management, including bad employee supervision.  The salon employees always have the same concerns, and as such, these have become the basis for my primer for supervising people for first-time managers:

1. Employees want their manager to be present. There are various approaches to being present, some more effective than others. As Studer disciples will attest, effective rounding is a great tool.
2. Employees want regular staff meeting where managers can communicate the big picture and where things are going.
3. Employees want clearly defined, preferably written and measurable, performance expectations.
4. Employees want opportunities for growth, including a plan for their continued education.
5. Employees want feedback regarding their performance. They want to know when they are not meeting expectations and they REALLY want recognition for good work. Sending employees hand-written thank you notes is a Studer “must-have”.
6. Employees want to be treated fairly. While low performers are often the biggest complainers about fairness, it is the high performers that are demotivated when they are treated the same as low performers. The Studer Group has great strategies for determining High, Middle and Low Performers and how to manage each group.

Should I tell our new managers to watch Tabitha’s Salon Takeover? Maybe that is not the best conclusion.  I think the real lesson is that inspiration to be a better manager is everywhere. If you are passionate about being better at something, think about it throughout the course of your day and it will find you.

Recently, we got a glimpse into internal emails sent by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.  They were both to a large audience and both were critical of internal efforts.  I found these to be reassuring in that they seem to echo my own personal philosophy regarding employee feedback:  Be candid, tell people (individually or collectively) when they do a good job and tell them when they don’t meet your expectations.

I prefer to give feedback direclty to the people, even if there are levels of management between us.  To some people this may be a bit of a shock.  In my experience many managers have trouble giving people negative feedback.  But I believe people need to understand what is expected and how they need to improve to meet expectations.  Hearing it directly from me has additional weight and ensures nothing is lost through intermediaries.

Of course there are a number of amazing things being done at Affinity and Ministry every day.  I try to thank people for their extraordinary efforts.  It is hard to recognize all of the good work.  It is one of the most challenging things in a division of 200+ people.

Over the years there has been a lot of debate regarding where the CIO should report. Most of the noise comes from CIOs that determine their self-worth by reporting to the CEO. I know this, because I used to be this way. But, the CEO is not always the best person. I now strongly believe that this is dependent on the organization and the leaders. There are very few generalities one can apply to this topic. The best example is here at Ministry. I report to the General Counsel. Now, this is very mis-leading. Our General Counsel, Ron Mohorek, is a top executive that just happens to be lawyer by education. Because of that background he is naturally in charge of legal matters. But, his greatest contribution to the organization is his ability to be strategic and tactical. This is where he spends most of his time.

Legal and IT matters are very similar. In both disciplines there is a temptation to hand over a business matter to the lawyer or the IT guy. In both cases this usually results in disappointment, especially when the business leader is not clear on what they are trying to accomplish.  Ron’s understanding of this greatly advances my cause to keep the accountability for IT initiatives out of IT (except the technical stuff).

At Affinity I do report to the CEO. And, this seems to be the best fit for that organization. I would love to hear your thoughts.

I am in the process of filling a position and it generated some thoughts about tech hiring that I wanted to share.

This position is a part-time position that can be done from one’s home. I have been overwhelmed by the quality of the candidates that this position has attracted. Many of these candidates are moms that are looking to adjust their work-life balance. It strikes me that there is a largely untapped market of talented women professionals that are looking for these part-time, telecommuting positions. With the invent of broadband Internet access, WebEx and other web 2.0 collaboration tools there is no reason for many of our employees to come into the office.

My other observation is about how candidates prepare for interviews. I cannot imagine going into an interview without doing my research on Google. It just speaks to the candidates proactive nature. When candidates tell me that they found this blog they get bonus points. If they are totally unaware of our organization it tells me that they didn’t even bother to go to our corporate web site. That would be hard for me to get past.

For future candidates that have found this blog, here are some tips for interviewing, especially me:

• laugh at my jokes
• be a good listener, most people will tell you what to say before they ask you the question
• bring samples of your work such as copies of reports, presentations, writing samples, etc.
• show me that you are technologically savvy.
• show me you are a self-learner
• be personable – people want to hire people they like