As hybrid and remote enterprises are becoming commonplace, IT managers must adapt their management styles to succeed.
Now more than ever, it’s critical to manage results and empower teams to determine how to most effectively achieve those results.
This will require strong managers who must support and measure progress without micromanaging or creating excessive reporting burdens.
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According to Mark Schnittman, co-founder and CTO of Hibou Labs.
“With the casual, overheard, and fresher conversations lacking in remote team interactions, the way a leader can keep tabs on the pulse of their organization is to ‘overhear’ discussions on public channels, especially in all types of channels,” he said.
Participating — without being bossy or micromanaging — is a powerful way to show your team you’re committed and supported, Schnittman said.
Uri Haramati, co-founder and CEO of Torii, agrees that it’s critical for IT leaders to communicate with their teams, especially in decentralized workplaces that disperse knowledge, application ownership and data.
“Without effective communication between IT and the rest of the organization, there is an increase in information silos, blind spots, and misalignments,” he said. “All of these make it virtually impossible to get business done as they result in wasted time and money, hampered innovation and increased security risks.”
SaaS sprawl adds to management challenges
IT managers are spending an inordinate amount of time managing the ever-growing stack of cloud applications, including searching phantom computingmanually provisioning apps, finding app owners and licenses, and tracking software-as-a-service (SaaS) cost spirals, Haramati said.
“They need tools that automatically gather all the information they need and make it easy to take the right actions,” he said, pointing to SaaS management platforms (SMPs), specifically designed for this purpose. effect.
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IT managers use SMPs to automatically onboard and remove employees from applications; shed light on SaaS spending and where to cut costs; discover all applications used by employees in real time, including all shadow IT applications; compare redundant applications; and automate complex workflows.
“By providing all of this information in a central dashboard, SMPs allow IT managers to play a more strategic, consultative and collaborative role,” he said.
By removing these important but time-consuming manual tasks from their long list of responsibilities, SMPs allow IT managers to hone their IT leadership skills in areas that need special attention, thereby improving the business.
Combat the “excessive centralization” of management processes
According to Ian Stendera, Vice President of Products at Ardoq, over the past few years, “over-centralization” has taken over IT management processes.
This has been especially true for the virtual or dispersed office – and with the recession looming if it hasn’t already – executives have widely used centralization to consolidate enterprise architecture or business design teams down to a or a few corporate technologists or “senior IT manager” roles, he said.
“Unfortunately, over-centralization doesn’t work,” Stendera said. “Instead, many organizations are moving from a project-centric structure to a product-centric structure to increase their agility and get the most out of their investments in knowledge workers.”
From his point of view, the democratization of business decisions makes more sense to keep pace with the evolution, dispersion and digitalization of the world of work – he calls democratized decision-making the modern and cutting edge technology.
“By enabling their dispersed teams across the digital enterprise, IT managers won’t have to make all the decisions themselves,” he noted. “It allows them to go from the ultimate authorities on enterprise architecture to collaborators who encourage data driven change across the company.”
Communication tools keep everyone in sync
Schnittman said digital tools can help a good manager stay organized and keep things from falling through the cracks, pointing out that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here because the best set of tools is a personal choice with no right or wrong answers.
“What’s most important is to recognize that being a great leader requires fundamental human skills and without these, the tools don’t have much to offer,” he said.
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A relatively complex tool like Jira is a great way to stay organized and track big goals, especially when working with a team, he said.
At the other end of the spectrum, a simple feature like “/remind me…” in Soft can be a great way to prevent personal tasks from falling through the cracks.
“When introducing new tools to your organization, it’s important to explain in plain language why the tool is being added,” Schnittman said. “What problem is it supposed to solve?” How will this new tool solve it effectively? »
An effective approach, he said, is to give a lighthearted overview at an existing general meeting.
“A recap can be posted and pinned to your IM platform,” he said. “The detailed reference material should also be posted to your internal archives for future review, either on a wiki or a shared drive.”
Build a free and organized data flow
Haramati calls the modern IT manager a “builder and enabler”, regardless of his where are the employees or what tools they use.
He believes that modern IT leadership skills will need to focus on building the connective and critical infrastructure essential to the free flow of data, communication and collaboration across all areas of the business.
“It’s critical that IT managers can communicate with their teams, especially in decentralized workplaces that disperse knowledge, application ownership, and data,” Haramati said.
Stendera added that with the remote workforce being the new norm, it is essential that each member of a team feels that they are part of a network of social and technical tools that meet their needs. .
“For management, that means making sure every staff member has access or can find the solutions they need from anywhere,” he explained. “In the near future, this will mean democratizing access to software, workflows and hierarchies so that every employee can become more autonomous in their work.
For example, if a user needs help with an HR tool, they can simply use their company search software to locate and contact the internal authority on that application for assistance.
Managers will also need to pave the way for these enterprise architecture repositories, which will enable more efficient interactions between departments.
“For IT leaders to be effective, they need soft skills and data to guide their decisions and influence,” Stendera said. “If IT leaders want to position themselves and their teams as enablers, they need to have answers that have traditionally been hard to come by quickly and with great confidence.”
About the Author
Nathan Eddie is a freelance writer for ITPro Today. He has written for Popular Mechanics, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine, FierceMarkets, and CRN, among others. In 2012, he directed his first documentary film, The Absent Column. He currently lives in Berlin.