The Savvy Manager: Which Types Have You Seen: Superhero or Monkey Tosser?

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The Savvy Manager: Which Types Have You Seen: Superhero or Monkey Tosser?
By Mike Bohlmann

August 1, 2008 —

There is no shortage of those among our peers and employees with a lack of social skills or good judgment. We need to watch out for the traits of poor social behavior or bad judgment in ourselves and our employees. These are just a few sets of bad behaviors that I have noticed in meetings, conferences and personal interactions over the last 10 years.

The Fourth Grader
Do you remember back in fourth grade how there was that one kid who was a lot smarter than the rest of the class? Remember how much that kid gloated whenever he could manage to show the teacher to be wrong? This type of person usually shows up at conferences or in training sessions focused on trying to find a flaw with the presented material. Once found, the know-it-all will ask a question to try to catch the speaker in his or her mistake. How can we avoid this trap? Realize that no speaker is going to give a perfect presentation. Instead of making a straw man of one specific point, think about the broader subject and ask a question that might resolve your concern with the narrower issue.

Tech Tunnel Vision
Everyone has his or her favorite tech of the moment. Right now my favorite tech is Drupal, a Web content-management system. If I were to suffer from tech tunnel vision, Drupal would be the solution I pitched to every Web content-management issue I came across.

The problem with tech tunnel vision is that no technology can be a one-size-fits-all solution. In the case of Web content-management, what if a site was going to have a blog emphasis? Wouldn’t WordPress be another option? Before coming up with a solution, be sure you spend time thinking about the problem and asking driving questions to be sure you have as much understanding as possible.

Shields Up
Sometimes when things are rough, it can be hard to be objective about obstacles we come across. Someone who always has their shields up will immediately get defensive when someone comes to them with an issue. “I keep getting messages about my e-mail being over quota,” says the user. The IT worker with their shields up responds, “It’s not my fault. I don’t have the budget to increase storage for e-mail.” That’s not really taking a customer service approach.

As budgets tighten up, we want to present the best possible face to IT that we can. It is unlikely that we are the only ones experiencing shrinking budgets with increased expectations, which means thinking from another person’s perspective can become a life-or-death skill. That goes for how you are viewed by the rest of the organization as well as for your own sanity at work.

Super Hero
Every time a project gets stuck or a server goes down, the super hero is there. The super hero waits for the next issue in need of being saved rather than looking ahead for trouble. The difficult part of this type is that he or she usually wins the hearts and minds of those who need IT services each time you save the day. The CEO will love you for fixing the problem they are having with their Blackberry, but is there something else you should be doing to prevent such problems in the future? Being available to quickly tackle the problem of the moment is good, but we need to make sure we don’t get stuck in super hero mode.

Monkey Tosser
A delegation and task management metaphor I ran across in the last year was the concept of monkey management. Monkeys are a metaphor for the initiative on a given task, issue or project. If you need to configure security on the new SharePoint instance for the collaboration system project, then you have the monkey for that task.

It is possible to give or receive monkeys with other people. The most common way that monkeys move from person to person in the modern organization is via e-mail. When you send an e-mail to someone expecting a response, you toss the monkey from your back onto your their back because they now have the initiative to move things forward. While this is a useful thing when dealing with direct reports, we need to be careful we are not sending e-mails just so we can avoid having the responsibility to move things forward. The negative aspect comes out when checking in on a task with an employee who reports, “Well, I e-mailed Lisa about that last week and didn’t get a response yet,” as a delaying tactic.

So as we go about our day-to-day work, sitting in meetings, and dealing with superiors and end users, we want to be careful we do not fall into one of these traps. At the same time, we should watch our staff for these traits and council them to work through these destructive behaviors. By keeping these things in mind, we can be more savvy managers and IT workers.

Mike Bohlmann is an IT manager at the University of Illinois. He can be reached at mikeb@wecanhelpit.com.

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