Best Practices for IT Manager to Plug IT Internally by Mike Dow
At BCG, we often hear from clients that a company’s management team doesn’t appreciate the importance of information technology. IT managers report fielding questions like “What is IT’s value?” They hear “Is it strategic? Is it part of operations?” Often, they hear “Should it be outsourced, to save headaches and frustration?”
Answers to these questions differ greatly by organization. But in an environment where such questions are being asked, managing an IT function is not easy. Worse is the situation where no questions are asked at all, because leadership doesn’t take sufficient interest in the function.
Either way, as head of IT, you have to help top management understand information technology better. Three principles can help your IT shop stay functional, be recognized for its importance, and act as a well-understood support organization in your organization: Connect to the business; communicate well; and make the financial case for IT’s benefits.
Stay Tuned In
If no one in your department has been to a job site in months, then IT is in big trouble. And it can easily happen. Your team gets buried in technology problem-solving, and it’s easier to sit at a workstation in the cozy confines of a cubicle than to get out on a site and see the work in action.
IT departments must stay connected with the business. Everyone in the group-from programmers to managers to data-center support personnel-needs to talk to the people on the ground. Construction managers produce top-line revenues and deal with customers’ needs every day. These are your bread-and-butter users, and the IT group needs to know how they use technology and what they need.
What to do when you visit the site? Look at work spaces. Try to understand the daily work load for on-site project managers, construction engineers, and crews. Sometimes, it’s enough to stop in and say why you’re there: shown a little interest, people will usually share information about a network or information management challenge. And, because they don’t really understand what you do, be sure to share your challenges with them.
A major benefit of connecting proactively with users is to solve infrastructure problems. End users have a personal relationship with the team, someone they can call for help when something goes awry. Knowing that, users will likely give you the benefit of the doubt as you work to solve their problem. Think of it as building “credit” for when there are IT problems that subtract from users’ faith in and perceptions of IT.
Get the Word Out
Job site visits are good and necessary. So is internal communication, partly just to combat the perception that IT people are not good communicators. IT managers need to tell people what’s going on in their group. Company newsletters are a good place to start; “lunch-and-learn” sessions, company meetings, and voicemail and email are all helpful. Keep communications regular, concise and informative.
Don’t overwhelm them with email, either! Get creative. Here are a few places to communicate IT “blurbs”:
Communications are most effective when part of an integrated plan, and different tactics can be used for certain situations. For example, Help Desk greetings let people know about current outages or problems, taking pressure off personnel who are trying to solve them.
Get the Facts
No one likes surprises. Almost all construction projects are run on a budget; all have contingencies. Company management will better understand what your IT group is doing if you’ve said early and often what their expectations should be. Conversely, managers get justifiably frustrated with IT personnel who request unplanned spending for hardware and software, or who present poorly supported proposals for new technology. At many companies, buying a $5,000 server chews up all the profit on a $100,000 project.
Not everything can be foreseen, but IT managers must develop and communicate anticipated capital outlays, expenses, and contingency spending during the company’s regular budget cycle. Preparing a budget is also a good time to discuss what services will be outsourced (e.g. spam filtering, VPN management, etc.) versus what will be managed internally. Cost/benefit analyses can be dissected and challenged, but at least management can see numbers alongside ideas. Don’t be afraid if your proposal gets rejected in any given year on the basis of financial constraints. That’s just business reality, and one that IT people sometimes forget.
There are a number of ways to collect facts about what the IT department is doing and why. One is industry benchmarking, by participation in industry roundtables or through the CFMA’s annual technology survey. A call to another similar sized contractor can be a great benefit; most companies will share IT ideas with a contractor from a geography that does not compete with them. If your management and peers learn that other comparable contractors use certain technologies, it can help make a case for investment.
Lastly, much information can be collected about the infrastructure that helps when communicating IT strategy. What is the company’s bandwidth utilization? How many PCs are three years old or more? How much time does the team spend cleaning up viruses every month? Most of this data has financial implications and should be tracked to help communicate why investments are required.
There is no magic to IT departments having a good reputation with peers. It depends on good communication, informed by knowledge of the business, delivered succinctly and effectively, and buttressed by financial and operational facts.
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