IT managers seem to be living in a sphere of paradoxes these days. With the rapid shifts of many technologies, business models and processes, from traditional server and desktop software support to today’s cloud computing and service-oriented models, from past role-based IT structure to today task-focused realignment, from clearly defined functional teams to highly mixed and collaborative environment, the calling for new management thinking, models and skills is imminent.
A few of these interesting paradoxes to today’s IT managers include:
1. Bold initiatives vs. Business-as-Usual
Nowadays there is no business-as-usual with all the disturbances and changes around IT businesses. Management whose goals are to maintain a steady growth in functional scope likely find themselves walking towards an obvious dead-end. It’s a demanding world for IT managers as new technologies, new concepts, new markets call for bold initiatives and actions towards uncharted territories in order to stay relevant.
2. Delegation vs. Details
To be effective, experienced managers must know how to delegate. Yet in order to show competence in today’s fast-moving IT environment, managers are expected to stay hands-on and understand all details of the ongoing business, technical or otherwise, and be able to articulate every detail to higher management at any time. As things are moving faster and changes are constant, a balancing act is harder and harder to achieve. Situations can get ridiculous.
3. Role-based vs. Skill-based Team Building
Increasingly IT managers are no longer managing a functional team of similar job requirements and skillset. Today’s IT environment often assigns a manager to lead a new initiative or deliver by projects and milestones. Under such a situation, a team of versatile skills are needed to fulfill the delivery requirements. These members with the needed skills, especially those who possess new skills or be able to quickly acquire new skills, can often be called upon to assist other concurrent projects in the larger organization. The concept of “a team” is more a collection of needed skills. An IT manager becomes more of a recruiter or facilitator than a traditional “manager” to fit into such a picture.
4. People vs. Cost
In many large IT organizations, one of the central theme in the adoption of new technologies is to significantly drive down the cost. At the meantime, modern technologies and automation are indeed replacing many human jobs, especially those with manual labor or tasks. RIFs, layoffs are so often these days among large companies’ IT organizations. However we often hear that a good manager must first be a people manager. In an unstable or relentlessly cost-driven organizational environment, this paradox can add to tremendous stress.
5. Experience vs. Everything New
Expectations are high for today’s IT managers in a traditional organization. They need maintain existing business operations fully functional without major troubles, and lead transitions and new initiatives at the same time. They need to be experienced leaders and people managers who can gather together diverse, shared or often newly recruited resources to perform, and concurrently deal with the constant demands and changes of the organization. They need know their daily business in details, and also keep themselves up-to-date on rapidly emerging new concepts and trends in the markets. A complete new set of skills is in urgent need for IT managers.
What are the solutions to these paradoxes? TriStrategist thinks that these daunting challenges to IT managers could be a direct signal that some fundamental changes to the structure or management concepts in IT business may be due. In today’s highly technology-driven environment, new thinking to both organizational structure and management as a science is clearly needed.