|
Human
Performance has
more impact on IT effectiveness than all other factors combined. The most
critical drivers are:
The only source of success
you have are the people who work for you. Everything you do in the way of
business alignment, technical architecture, and IT process maturity has one
goal: To allow your staff to function as effectively for the business as possible.
Leadership:
Usually treated as an intangible matter of character, leadership includes
a number of highly tangible subjects and teachable techniques. Among the
more important components of leadership are goal-setting, delegation,
and motivation. Most important of all, leadership is about how decisions
are made and whether they're made at all.
Staffing
and skills management: The single most important factor in any
IT leader's success is the caliber of the people who work for them, yet
many IT managers consider the process of recruiting to be a painful annoyance.
Even worse, they consider recruiting to be finished the moment an employee
is hired. Meanwhile, the process of deciding when and how to promote employees
is often a tug of war between IT and human resources. Staffing and skills
management cover the ability of IT leaders to make sure they have the
right people with the right skills in the right roles at the right time.
Compensation
and rewards: Many IT leaders consider compensation and
rewards their primary tool for motivation and employee retention. For
the most part, this can't work. The fact of the matter is that a bad compensation
and rewards system will demotivate employees and drive them away. A good
one? It makes sure employees have no financial incentive to leave. More
significantly, it's a far more powerful communications channel for conveying
your priorities than any mission or vision statement.
Organization:
The habit of many leaders is to fix performance problems by changing the
organizational chart. Since every employee knows beyond a shadow of a
doubt that reorganizations harm performance, it's an interesting habit.
Structure includes the organizational chart, which does sometimes need
adjustment so as to minimize the barriers faced by employees trying to
do their jobs. Organizational design should always be the last step in
any effectiveness enhancement effort, though. If it's the first, you're
acting like an engineer who thinks he can fix the Titanic with a roll
of duct tape.
Team
dynamics: "Team"
may be the most mis-used word in organizational dynamics. While managers
tend to call any group that reports to them a team, it isn't really a
team unless its members are interdependent. When they are, managers need
to pay close attention to team dynamics, because it's remarkably easy
for teams to become distracted by interpersonal issues, lack of common
understanding, and simple rivalries.
|
