What the Best IT Managers Do

The best information technology (IT) managers begin with a single concept: not to manage, but to lead. You can be seduced into managing information, but that is not an IT manager’s job. An IT manager leads people to work in an organization making computers and networks run smoothly. You cannot lead information; you must lead people. That is the nucleus of the traits of the best IT managers, but by no means all they—or you—should do. 

 

As an IT Manager, You Lead

Leading an IT team means more than Monday morning huddles. Motivate by showing you are motivated yourself. 

Sometimes leaders stand side-by-side with their team members, being visible when the team sweats through a 2 a.m. cutover, or working through the weekend to meet a deadline. 

Sometimes leaders stand above the team, rallying them to higher levels of excellence, but not so often that the cheerleading sounds hollow. Sometimes leaders stand in front of the team, bearing the brunt of blame for perceived IT problems without singling out team members. 

As an IT Manager, You Laugh

Have a sense of humor:

  • Be primarily self-deprecating
  • Avoid childish pranks and sight gags
  • Use situational humor
  • Never laugh at your team

Humor will carry you over many a reboot roadblock. A sense of humor in an IT manager breaks tension, fosters togetherness, and reminds everyone that life exists outside the IT department. 

As an IT Manager, You Inform

Effective IT managers take incoming chaos and shape it to benefit not just their departments, but the companies they serve. The best IT managers listen closely to different departments’ needs, and provide technology and networks that differentiate between, say, accounting and the art department. 

Communicating effectively is part of shaping information. Informing other departments of your department’s strengths and available solutions makes the IT department even more valuable, as people view IT as a resource, not a barricade. 

The very best IT managers—who fully accept their job is to lead—can communicate with all types of people, from outside vendors to shipping personnel to senior managers. Knowing when to speak technically and when to use metaphors, for example, can make you more valuable to the many company employees who do not share an IT department’s passion for IT. 

The print edition of this August’s issue of Scientific American (yes, some of us around here still read actual magazines!) features a marvelous article about the amount of information our planet can hold. Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), calculates that earth’s “hard drive”—the capacity to store information in an ordered fashion—can hold roughly a trillion trillion trillion trillion (that’s 1056) gigabits of data. What have we used so far, stored in pictures, texts, videos, cars, shoes, DNA and biomass? About 1044bits, a tiny fraction of available "disk" space. 

As an IT Manager, You Create Order

Earth is only abstractly a hard drive; a good IT manager knows she can’t store her company’s financial records in mitochondria and ribosomes, expecting to retrieve them successfully. But thinking of the planet as an under-used hard drive helps to appreciate how difficult order—precision, timeliness, accuracy, geodesy, archiving and retrieving—is for any system, from a Mom-n-Pop storefront to a multinational conglomerate. 

The best IT managers recognize that change comes to their department at a dizzying pace, and not every team member is eager to leap to the new. A good IT manager knows how to tap into team talent, letting the early adopters engage with emerging technology while letting others focus on the business of technology delivery. You cannot order and compartmentalize the wave of tasks coming at your department, but you can order and structure your team’s reactions to those demands. 

As an IT Manager, You Exuberate

Life is often challenging, from sleepless nights to nasty commutes and cold coffee. What separates competent, long-lasting, steel-cored IT leaders from bungee bosses? Bungee bosses tend to complain without offering solutions. They inhabit—for a little while—the territory of failure.  

The best IT managers show exuberance and optimism, offering solutions when discussing problems, rising above momentary challenges—and challenges are all they are, not dead ends—leading their IT department, meeting and surpassing expectations, overcoming problems with quiet confidence. 

As an IT Manager, You Educate

The very best leaders—IT managers, CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, Captains of volleyball teams or aircraft carriers—are always learning. They are open to opportunity. They educate themselves and those around them informally and formally. 

Consider surrounding yourself with two different groups of workers:

  • Educated, trained and capable technologists and technicians
  • Poorly spoken, uncertain, tentative desk fillers

Start On Your Path Toward Becoming an IT Manager

Clearly you feel more comfortable working among highly trained, well-educated colleagues who value learning. An excellent place to meet people like that is by enrolling in ECPI University’s Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration with a concentration in IT Management. Here, you gain the foundational skills to be a leader, not just of a department, but of people. Contact ECPI today to learn more about becoming an IT professional—it could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!

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