by Elizabeth Ferrarini

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that the rich are different from you and me. If Fitzgerald were to come back to life and to hang around a few data centers, he would say the same thing about IT professionals. And, Paul Glen can attest to the unique qualities that IT professionals bring to the workplace. He is the author of the award-winning book, Leading Geeks - How to Lead and Manage  People Who Drive Technology, and he is a columnist for  Computerworld. Glen has more than 10 years of experience delivering and managing IT products and services, and he has taught classes as part of MBA programs at the University of Southern California. In fact, many graduate programs cite his book in courses about managing technical professionals.

Here, Glen provides Enterpriseleadership.org with insight into the workplace psyche of IT professionals, and the best way to lead these employees.

EL: Why did you write the book?

PG: As a hands-on manager, I was a consumer of business books. I sensed a real disconnect between what I was experiencing on the ground and what I was reading in the generic leadership management books. So much of the leadership stuff was universal in nature, regardless of whether you were leading an army, or a bunch of third graders. However, leadership is not a universal construct.

I laid out an analytical framework for what leadership should be, in any environment. The work of the people you lead affects how you lead. Finally, I looked at the nature of power in organization. With IT professionals, power is completely useless. On the other hand, leadership theories intertwine with the notions of power. IT professionals deliver their value through their thoughts, not their behavior. If a systems administrator is typing a manifesto rather than code, then he or she has changed the value they deliver.

EL: Should the CIO be a position that is rotational throughout the  business units for several years?

PG: It's an interesting idea, and probably not a bad one. On the other hand, it depends on the size of the organization and the company's job description for the CIO position. It's probably better that executives have the rotational experience of becoming a CIO, but there are pros and cons. This kind of rotation integrates into the CIO role a wonderful, user-community perspective. And, rotating from one department to another is great for those who want to become a CIO, but once you get into the CIO chair, you should stay there. On the other hand, a good deal of the CIO's job involves relationship building. If executives rotate in and out of that role, it becomes difficult for them to maintain stable relationships, and their abilities to navigate the corporate policies become somewhat compromised. They don't have a consistent position from which to work.

EL: What motivates IT professionals?

PG: The most motivating thing you can do is to avoid de-motivating them. The bottom line is that you can't motivate technical people. You can create an environment in which their internal motivation thrives, but you can kill their motivation. Things such as making commitments without consulting the technical experts are killers. Other killers include getting an evaluation from an executive whom the technical person doesn't feel is a reliable source, and issuing false deadlines tied to someone's ego.

EL: Aren't these things that would de-motivate anyone?

PG: Certain dynamics effect what I call the knowledge inversion. In other words, no matter how smart an executive is, the people below him or her actually know more about what's going on in the technology than the executive. It's contrary to how we normally think. When you go up the chain of command in IT, you know less than everyone else. We end up with differing specialties.

Executives have their political specialties, and technical people have their technology agenda. Each group needs to consult one another. For example, if a manufacturing executive makes a change to the assembly line, workers don't get offended because they understand how the line is put together. IT has a different set of dynamics, because IT people need to understand and to accept why things are necessary.

EL: CIOs are now talking about hiring business analysts. How does an  IT professional become a business analyst?

PG: If you're drawn to do technical work, then that's part of you. That doesn't mean a technical person can't be a good business analyst. In fact, any reasonably intelligent person can easily pick up most business concepts. It involves having the interest and the willingness to learn to appreciate the intersection of business and technology, rather than just concentrating on technology.

EL: What changes have you seen in the make up of the IT professional  since the Pulitzer Prize winning book, Soul of a New Machine appeared  in 1985?

PG: The technology has changed and the tools used have changed. However, the human condition hasn't radically changed in the past 20 years.

EL: What about factors such as professional offshoring?

PG: That's relatively new, but even in Soul of a New  Machine, they had groups competing in different locations. Now, we've got the same dynamics today, but the competition is in India versus San Francisco. The book looked at the product development environment, which is different from corporate IT, which is a unit to support the business strategy. The technical skills for both of the two groups of people are somewhat similar. Today, you see product development being offshored and outsourced; however, this scenario hasn't changed the nature of the work being done. It changes the boundaries between companies, the nature of contract monitoring, and the aspects of dealing with multicultural and multi-site issues.

EL: What are some of the ways IT professionals add value to the  organization?

PG: The list includes the following: technical competency, personal productivity, ability to juggle multiple tasks at the same, the ability to describe the business context of technical work, the ability to forge compromises between business and technical constraints, the ability to manage client relationships, the ability to manage technical teams, and the ability to play positive politics.

Technical people have a hard time with politics because they don't think of it as real work. They find it's harder to figure out what to do than to do it. Deciding what to do is a political process. Why? Groups make decisions. IT people can dream up many ways something can work, but they fall short  when it comes to figuring out how it should work. As a result, IT  professionals need to expect to revise things. That's the nature of creativity.

EL: How do you represent technical professionals, ranging from the CIO to the systems administrator, to the world outside the company?

PG: Internal representation has a number of responsibilities. The representative needs to think carefully about such things as projecting the prominence of the group (keeping their image appropriate to their production), protecting them from the outside world, and insulating the gyrations of politics.

The function of external representation isn't different for a CIO than for a CFO. When you're looking out from your group, your job isn't remarkably different. When you look inside your group, the CFO's job looks remarkably different than the CIO's job. The difference is the dynamics of the people who elect to work for a CIO versus a CFO, and the dynamics of the work itself.

EL: How do you organize IT professionals to get the most from  them?

PG: You organize them around the questions for which you need answers. What we like to think of as knowledge work is really ignorance work. When you look at IT work, every person on a project has two things to do: figure out what questions need to be asked in their areas of responsibility, and then figure out how to answer those questions. They can answer them as code, a project plan, a test plan, a user document, or a deployment plan. Every professional brings his or her knowledge to a situation that is fundamentally one of ignorance. You need to organize IT professionals to mirror the external political forces that have interest in the outcome of the project.

EL: What kinds of leaders do IT professionals make?

PG: Some make very good leaders. It's like this: Good leaders include people who can transform themselves into someone gratified by helping others succeed, as opposed to someone who succeeds themselves. This is a transformation anyone who is a manager wants to experience. Since we start our careers as contributors, it means a shift in our own notions of self. But many IT professionals don't want to be managers.

EL: Any comments on Nichols Carr's book, Does IT  Matter?

PG: He makes a lot of valid points about the trajectory of the technology and of IT. He overstates the case somewhat by over-simplifying the nature of software and overestimating the value of best practices. Either way, he has made a valuable contribution to the conversation.

--

Elizabeth M. Ferrarini is a technology writer based in  Boston, Massachusetts. Contact her at elizabethferrarini@yahoo.com.