Peter, Lots of great advice. I hope you don't regret asking the question.
I haven't read every reply because they are coming in fast and furious. Hopefully these are additions and not repeats. Understand your organizational culture. How do things happen in your organization and who are the key players that influence or decide. How do customers perceive your team and how do they interact with it. Organizational culture can be slow to change but it is not impossible. Know when you are tilting at windmills so you aren't wasting efforts on things you cannot change. Know what makes your organization succeed and how your team contributes to that. Make sure they know it too. It is easy to get overwhelmed by every little request, but some have greater impact than others (business needs). Give your employes time to innovate and learn. Be proactive about this or they will put their heads down and work 100% without thinking about their own careers. We have had good success with Kanban. Caveat: I see kanban as a set of principles that you should mold to your workflow. It might mean some trial and error before you find the appropriate kanban process for your team. Adapt as necessary. And have fun! Carolyn IT manager since 2001 Sent using a mouse-sized keyboard with feigned autocorrect intelligence. On Jan 7, 2014, at 10:15 AM, Peter Grace <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello list, > > Well, I've been an IT Director for about half a year now. In this time I > have learned quite a bit more about what it takes to be a manager and the > amount of self discipline it requires to keep all of the pieces on the > chessboard moving safely. > > After 6 months, my self evaluation is I suck at being in charge of an IT > department, and by gosh I want to fix that. I am asking for your opinions on > all manners of self-help: certification ideas, books that have helped you > "grok" how a department should work properly, ways to improve process > management, things of this nature. I want to be the best I can be and I know > that a lot of the people on this list have "been there, done that" and have > lived to tell the tale. I'd love to hear yours. > > I struggle since the place where I work still has a lot of startup mentality > but they're getting to the size where we need to start making it > "enterprisey" to keep things moving smoothly. A lot of the people in the > organization feel like making things more enterprise-like means that they'll > be mired in paperwork and mucky-muck and it's tough to break that opinion. > What are your experiences? > > Thanks in advance, > > Pete > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
