IT Manager's Handbook: Getting Your New Job Done (13 page)

Communication Skills

Can this person communicate well? Are their e-mails clear and easy-to-read, or are they rambling and take 10 minutes to read and are still difficult to understand? Are they personable? Do they make eye contact? Do they speak well in meetings, do they make personal attacks, or do they say nothing at all? Technical people are often not great communicators because their jobs often don’t require tremendous amounts of interaction. But there is a base level of information exchange that every job requires and a base level of interactive behavior that every organization requires. If a person works in a group, there are certain standards that must be met. And in the new agile, just-in-time corporate world we work in, communication is more important than ever. There is a much greater sense of urgency now and employees who are at the forefront of the work—as IT workers often are—find themselves having to be much more communicative than ever. Note this in the employee’s review; often technical people do have a more difficult time communicating, and if they do a good job at this, that should be noticed and recognized by their manager.

Innovation

Today’s technology can be used in many different ways. And when multiple technologies are combined, the possibilities for new ideas grow exponentially. Innovation is the ability to think outside the box, and is an attribute for finding new ways of doing things or doing new things. This could be anything related to simplifying processes, reducing errors, or finding additional uses for existing tools.

Going Above and Beyond Requirements of the Job

Many employees view their work as nothing more than a job, a day’s work for a day’s pay, and have almost an adversarial stance about doing anything more. Can you fault someone for doing only what they are supposed to do? However, for those who view their work as more of a career than a job and seek to be promoted and moved up, going above and beyond the job requirements is one of the best ways to achieve those goals. This can include helping out coworkers, putting in extra time, volunteering to do the more challenging tasks, working on items that no one else seems to want to do, and so on.

Coordination, Interaction, and Collaboration with Others (Particularly Those They Don’t Have Direct Authority Over)

“Plays well with others” is another way to describe this attribute. It simply means that they work well with others—their peers on the team, as well as customers, clients, users, among others. This could apply to situations where a large team is formed for a particular project or routine activities, as well as the case of individual contributors that have to interact with others only periodically. It also means gaining the respect of those you work with. To do all this well requires a numbers of skills and traits: interpersonal style, influencing, leadership, communication/listening, trust, adaptability, compromise, and relationship building.

Accountability

Managers look for accountability in their employees primarily because it makes the manager’s job easier. A manager prefers knowing that when an employee is assigned a task, it will be done, and the manager won’t have to do regular checks to ensure that work is progressing. (See the next item on completing assignments on time.) Accountability also means that employees will recognize what their own responsibilities are and will not sit around waiting for the manager to tell them what to do. If your staff isn’t accountable, you end up as a micromanager. However, it’s up to the manager to make their employees feel accountable through follow-up, project assignments, stated goals and objectives, and a clear statement of the job requirements, as well as the impact to others when things don’t go as planned.

Ability to Complete Assignments in a Timely Manner

Timely performance is critical in all environments. Gone are the days when deadlines were approximations and missing them had few consequences. “Just in time” no longer refers to an inventory technique; it now is often used to describe how entire departments and companies act in response to market conditions.

Be clear about your expectations for timely performance and let your staff know you’ll be using that as a criterion for evaluation. Let them know that you are being evaluated on that basis as well. Installing the new phone system by Monday instead of Friday may be suddenly required, but create an environment where people feel comfortable suggesting coming in on Saturday (or at least discussing if it is necessary).

Ethics and Compliance

Over the past few years, society in general, and companies in particular, have placed increased emphasis on “doing the right thing.” This involves everything from following laws (e.g., Sarbanes–Oxley, discrimination, harassment) to practicing common-sense integrity (not padding time sheets, not accepting large gifts from vendors, respecting confidentiality, professionalism, etc.). As a result, many companies have moved to fully integrate this tenet into every part of their existence—from the company mission to the employee code of conduct, as well as the performance review. This is an ideal situation where leading by example can have a huge impact. If employees see you taking a tablet device for personal use, they can easily begin to think that personal use of company resources is perfectly fine.

Ability to Pick Up New Skills on Their Own

The IT world changes so quickly that it’s an employee’s fundamental responsibility to help herself, her department, and her company stay current. Every department has the programmer still resting on his legacy coding skills—encourage your staff not to become that person. Some of the best and brightest are those who can pick up new skills on their own either through experimental trial and error, learning things on their own time, or by picking up a reference book, such as this one. See the section
“Employee Training”
on
page 39
earlier in this chapter for details on the issue of training.

Ability to Work with and Enhance the Work of Other Staff Members

You may have a Windows administrator with superlative technical skills but zero people skills. Let him know that your IT department is a team, not a random collection of individuals, and that everyone is expected to interact professionally with each other. He doesn’t have to go to the team picnics, but snarling or swearing at anyone else who touches the system isn’t acceptable either. These employees often don’t realize the impact their behavior has on others or how IT Managers see it as a limitation on the individual’s career growth.

Many a manager has had to say, “You don’t have to
like
all your fellow IT department members, but you have to treat them with professionalism, respect, and work with them in a collaborative manner.” This is a common problem with technical people, and one way of solving the issue is to inform them that their behavior in this area is part of their review.

Ability to Manage Short- and Long-Term Projects

Every employee in IT is given projects, some long and complex, some short and simple. Inform your staff that their ability to handle projects is an element you will be evaluating when it comes to review time. Many employees might not think in project-related terms; they think their task is to get the new laptops installed in the Sales department in the next two weeks and not see how it relates to the bigger goal of a new sales-force automation system implementation. Of course, that is a project, a set task with a specific goal, resources, and a timeline. For some levels and tasks, as long as they finish the projects on time and under budget, it isn’t important for them to think in project management terms. But those who do see the bigger picture and take the long view will probably have brighter futures. (See
Chapter 4
on
Project Management
on
page 103
for further details on projects and project management.)

Specific Evaluation Statements

The words used in performance reviews can have a great deal of impact, or no impact at all. You want to be sure that you are clear and that each statement has meaning and value to the employee. Avoid ambiguity and use examples and facts to back up your assessments. See
Table 2.1
for some samples.

Table 2.1.
Sample Evaluation Comments

Useful Metrics

If the individual being reviewed has a position that is operational in nature, you should include quantitative metrics in the review:

•
Network uptime

•
Systems response time

•
Call resolution/response time

•
Project delivery time (and budget)

•
Number of incidents (or calls) addressed per hour (or day)

•
System reliability

When thinking about metrics, think about the goals for that employee and their job. How would you determine or measure if they are meeting those goals? When goals can be measured, and are measured, it is easier for you and the employee to be aware of how well things are going.

Guidelines for Reviews

Don’t forget: both you and the members of your IT staff are salaried professionals. Act as such, and treat them that way. Your respect will be rewarded.

Be Objective

It’s important to remember that a performance review is the company’s formal assessment of the employee’s performance. Be as objective as possible. Remember reviews of your own performance—often the most contentious items are the subjective ones. With this in mind, your performance review should be full of examples and specifics to back up your assessment. Providing quantifiable accomplishments, specific examples, and measurable goals helps you remain objective.

Also, remember that others may read this review in the future. Other people in the company, for example, may read this review when thinking about transferring the employee into their department or the person may leave and may later reapply at your company. Be sure that your comments accurately reflect the employee’s performance.

Carefully Record Details

The more specifics you can provide, the more valuable the review will be for the employee. And the more specifics you can provide now, the more meaningful it will be in the future. It’s hard to recall the incidents you need when you’re looking back on the past 12 months. Review your own status reports to help jog your memory. And, during the year, jot quick notes to yourself on scraps of paper that you toss into the employee’s file, or write an e-mail to yourself that you can refer to later. Although this sounds like a great idea in theory, it is in fact something many good managers do on a regular basis. Details matter, and memories fade. Record them as they happen and both you and the recipient of your work—for this is real work that managers have to do—will be better for it.

When reviewing these notes, take the long view. Try and look over the course of the entire year and remember that you probably wrote those notes when something was going particularly well, or particularly poorly. Perhaps those comments are right on target or perhaps they represent an emotional high or low.

As you prepare the review, you can also ask the employee for her own list of accomplishments (and areas they think they can improve upon) over the past 12 months. (See the section later in this chapter
“Have Employees Review Themselves”
on
page 20
.) These notes can also help jog your memory and help you understand what the employee considers her greatest achievement. Additionally, it helps you see what the employee thinks were their important contributions. Getting her input can help you avoid embarrassment by failing to mention something that was important to her. Remember, employees take reviews very seriously, especially if they are less than stellar. The review becomes an important part of the employee’s official records so you want to do your best to make sure it’s comprehensive and accurate.

Negative Reviews

Performance reviews that are mostly or entirely negative are difficult for both the reviewer and the reviewed.

There are four important points to keep in mind if you are in this situation:

•
Be as specific as possible, both about the problem area and ways to correct.

•
Negative reviews should not be a surprise to anyone.