Are People the Answer? Not Necessarily…
March 17, 2008
Happy St. Patty’s Day. We owe much of our country’s early infrastructure development to the large group of Irish immigrants that came over in the 1800’s. Masses of capable workers were the solution to getting the canals, railroads, and roads built in this country over a century ago. My wife’s family is Irish. She’s the 6th of 10 kids and has quite a nice family. In the 1800’s “people” were the answer to most economic growth initiatives. Nowadays, I’m not so sure that’s still the answer.
In a March 4th article in the Dayton Business Journal (Dayton, Ohio….the one team that should have made it into the NCAA March Madness and didn’t) there’s an article that quotes Robert Half, the Menlo Park, California-based IT Staffing firm, that shows Ohio has a robust hiring plan in IT for 2008. By polling CIO’s at Ohio-based Headquarters of large firms, they see a “fertile job market” where 10% of them are predicting adding staff in Cincinnati while 4% are predicting staff reductions. There’s other cities mentioned as well that show an increase in hiring people into IT. I have a problem with the very concept the article was written on. It’s really a “nothing article” since IT isn’t about “how many people are in your organization” but rather how are you increasing productivity of your end users, your vendors, your clients! We are in a race to add more computing power unleashing the power of DATA. Everyone defaults their focus on IT meaning Technology and thus, Technology is taken care of by PEOPLE. Then we talk about “how many people are in your organization?” as if one has an army of talent to lead into battle in the world economy…not so, from my viewpoint. The article didn’t say what the other 86% of the CIO’s are doing in the Cincinnati market??? The stronger companies are focusing on creating collaborative environments where the power of INFORMATION and not TECHNOLOGY is the key to their value proposition.Nick Carr in his recent book The Big Switch is espousing that the IT world is going to change significantly one more time. This metamorphosis is going to close down separate Data Centers just like the industrial revolution 100 years ago reallocated individual power generation dynamo’s into a centralized power generation model shared through the electric grid. In their case, the grid had to be built after the centralized power generation facilities went up. In our case, the grid is the Internet and all of that fiber that started to be laid 10 years ago and is now providing huge bandwidth. Centralized data centers needed centralized people to run the physical aspects of them. Frankly, the logical attributes are virtualized just in the same manner the centralized data centers’ hardware and processing infrastructure are being virtualized. Everything from developing logical architecture (SOA), application requirements, application development and testing, and even managing all of the databases once in production can be done “anywhere, anytime, by anyone.” People are certainly needed and yet, processes are even more important. For maximum productivity, the people shouldn’t be in Ohio. Let’s be frank. The people should be where the processes are most mature and their costs become the lowest common denominator (read: Asia although our falling dollar may make other places and even the US more competitive). By providing computing power “just in time” with managed services on a “just in time” basis as well, there isn’t much of a need for an IT organization. Perhaps we rename IT the “Processes and Measures Services Organization.” Even the word “Information” is not needed since Information is an assumed need every time!
Ironically, Robert Half does have a division called Provititi whose main services offerings are centered around “Processes and Measures!!!” Now that’s cool! So, next time, I hope the Dayton Business Journal writes a story about Productivity Improvement measures for the Ohio-based companies! (I would be happy to serve as a source.)
No Whammies! No Whammies! Stop!
February 24, 2008
There are two words that can strike fear in the heart of the most seasoned of managers: PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS. But why is that? Companies spend countless dollars each year training their managers on how to do evaluations and refining their performance evaluation systems, but has any of it really made it easier?
When it comes down to it, we as human beings, no matter how many courses we’ve taken, or books we’ve read, we are just not “wired” to give very direct, honest feedback. Think about it. How many times as child did you say something brutally honest only to be told by your mother “that’s not a nice thing to say”?
How many people go home at night to their spouses and initiate a conversation something like this: “honey, I need to give you some feedback on how you’re performing as my significant other”? Sounds crazy, right? (Can you predict how that feedback would be received?)
And yet, that’s what good managers are supposed to do for their employees on a regular basis. It’s only fair to let people how they measure up to the company’s expectations- not to mention that it’s typically the basis for performance increases.
The consulting environment adds another quirk that most corporate managers do not face with the same regularity- and that’s the challenge of managing people that we may never work with directly. In the consulting environment, most of our managers are billable consultants first then managers second. They typically maintain their own client engagements which may never cross paths on a daily basis with their direct reports. So how do you provide feedback on people you don’t work with everyday- or whose work you don’t supervise?
Forget annual evaluations! In my opinion, performance feedback- both positive and constructive- should be given monthly. Yes, I said monthly. And, yes, I know how much work evaluations are to do annually. And yes, I know how busy everyone is with their “day jobs.” But, even in an informal fashion, monthly feedback will help to make the annual evaluation a review of the year versus the annual WHAMMY that most evaluations turn out to be. An employee who has received nine to twelve pieces of feedback on their work has headlights as to what is working and what needs to be adjusted in order to meet the company’s expectations.
When it comes to evaluations, a good manager knows what they don’t know, and seeks input from others in order to provide the most accurate feedback to their employees. They seek out client opinions, colleague opinions, perhaps even peer opinions- even if it means bucking the internal HR systems a bit to do so (apologies to my HR brothers and sisters out there!).
At the end of the day, giving direct feedback will never feel especially comfortable to most of us. But most people don’t like surprises- especially when it comes to their performance evaluations. No matter how you give the feedback- formal process, casual conversation- it doesn’t matter as long as you are giving your feedback frequently. So leave the WHAMMIES to the game shows, and don’t even think about giving your spouse their performance evaluation!
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