MORE ENTRIES
- When your salary is capped
- Placing IT effectiveness on the org chart
- Outsourced during a deathmarch
- One that didn't turn out so well
- Reviewing mostly good employees
- Clarifying the difference between assessment and measurement
- The (limited) value of corporate cheerleaders
- The magic formula for IT budgeting
- When IT is up the creek without a sponsor
- More about compensation
Advice Line | Bob Lewis »
November 2007
Dear Bob ...
Do many companies have the policy of down-rating annual raises when the rate is close to the band cap? I understand that one part of that is to motivate the employee to do enough to get promoted (stop complacency).
However, that backfires when there's no job band available to be promoted into. Then the employee is faced with acceptable reviews, with annual raises more like those given to employees with sub-par performance ratings (mixed message there), and no where to go but out.
- Capped
Dear Capped ...
Most do. It has nothing to do with motivation and everything to do with basing compensation on the labor marketplace. If a company were to continue to give salary increases for someone at top of band, the company would have a financial incentive to replace the employee with another who could provide equivalent services for less.
The smart ones recognize the de-motivating aspect of having compensation fail to reflect strong performance, and provide a one-time bonus since a salary increase isn't possible.
For more on this subject (if you missed the original columns), see "Poor Joe" and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running, 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
I am interested if you know of organizations that have an IT Effectiveness manager in their organizational structure. If so, where in the org chart does it fit, who does it report to?
- Organizing
Dear Organizing ...
Not that I know of as a separate organizational function. Personally, I figure it's a core responsibility of the CIO and the IT management team.
What are often put into a separate organizations are implementation projects for making IT more effective - ITIL and systems management efforts, for example. These are generally chartered as projects. I suppose you could view the project teams as temporary departments.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
My department is being outsourced. Two people are here until April 15th. I'm not one of them. The other two, the supervisor and I, are gone December 31st.
We are in the middle of a huge application upgrade that management hopes to have completed by the end of the year. (Actually, they wanted it out last month, but the developers keep releasing buggy versions and our mainframe team haven't provided us good data for testing.)
The program runs as a single-user app in the field and as a multi-user app in-house. I'm in charge of that. Preparing the upgrade will be a pain, but I can do it. However, the actually upgrade is a nightmare. I've done two small ones so far this year, and this will be larger and more complicated.
For each of the last two upgrades, I had to be in the office for my usual six-to-eight-hour shift. Then I would go home and spend eight hours a night and 8-10 hours per day on the weekends doing the upgrades. Last time I literally worked 90-100 hours per week for two weeks straight.
I was willing to do it then because historically, we have received comp time for that sort of effort. My supervisor--the one being laid off at the same time I am--is very lax about things like my leaving early now and then BECAUSE I am willing to make that sort of a commitment. Also, there had been talk of bonuses and promotions.
Bonuses are given in the spring, and I won't be here.
In addition to simply being unwilling now, I'm not even sure I have the time. I've made commitments for volunteer work associated with the holiday season. I'm already spending 4-6 hours per night on that. I have a job hunt, I have holiday preparations like everyone else, and to top it all off, my landlord is evicting me for unrelated issues and I have to find a new place to live.
If I were the boss, and my soon-to-be-laid-off employee told me what this job entails, I'd offer some compensation. Of course, that's probably why I'm not in management.
I'm salaried, and I understand that sometimes I have to work more than forty hours in a week. But something is very off about this situation and I have no idea what to do other than buckle down and spend a few long, sleepless weeks.
Help me, Obi-Bob Kenobi. You're my only hope.
- Paduan
Dear Paduan ...
Here's my thinking: You have an obligation to be professional about how you handle your current assignment. That obligation is to yourself, not to anyone else. You'll feel better about yourself if you handle things professionally. And you've built quite a few personal relationships which you want to preserve through this transition. You'll bump into some of these individuals again throughout your career. You want them to remember you in a good light.
Both of these results matter to you.
You also have an obligation to yourself to look out for your own interests first. Nobody else in this equation will do so, which means if you don't, your interests will go unrepresented.
You and your supervisor, or perhaps just you, have to get in front of the project manager, project sponsor, "management" (whoever that is), or some combination and present them with some alternatives that will get the job done for the company.
First, let them know how many hours of effort will be required between now and successful delivery of your responsibilities, based on your experience with the earlier upgrades. Second, review with them the alternatives for the company to get this one finished:
Then go back to your desk, document the conversation, and give your employer an honest week's work for an honest week's pay, every remaining week until December 31st ... and nothing more than that. If this is a project with weekly status meetings, provide honest updates each week and honest assessments of what is required to make the final deadline.
When your departure date arrives, the upgrade isn't complete, and someone asks, point out that you informed them of what would be required for you to finish the upgrade, and they chose to not take any of the actions required. Show them where you've left all of the files and documentation required for your replacement to finish the work, pack your box, and leave. Let whoever asks know that you are willing to work as a subcontractor for the outsourcer until the upgrade is complete, if that's of any interest.
You'll know that at least one of the people involved in this situation handled it professionally. That it was you but not company management is not your problem.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
Back in February, I had written to you about struggling to maintain my position in the midst of changes brought about by a corporate buy out. Things looked pretty good back then.
And then, they didn't.
Biggest problem was the numbers, of course. While we made money last year, we didn't make our targets.
This year, we didn't even make money.
You could feel the drum start beating at the home office, far in the distance. Every week, there were more questions from corporate about sales, and every week the reports showed a downturn in revenues.
For my part, managing the upgrade to our CRM system went badly. It was nearly six months before everything was working as it should.
More drums from corporate.
Last month, the corporate folks started walking around the office on a regular basis. They didn't even ask many questions - at least not of me.
Turns out they were subtly interviewing the employees. When they had enough data, the Office Operations Manager and I were both "made redundant."
While no reasons were given other than job elimination, I figure there were two primary causes:
1. As Napoleon said, "pour encourager les autres." In other words, when the chips are down, and the performance returns aren't there, fire a couple of managers, just to drive home the point that you've got to make money for the business to stay employed.
2. My own damn fault. I was very loyal to my boss. After he was ousted from the company three months ago, I told too many folks how bitter I was about losing him. This was also true of the OOM as well. A number of employees also voiced such opinions - they still have jobs. But then, see item 1.
Well, as someone pointed out, I had ten good years at the company. I learned a lot, did a lot, made some good friends, and a few enemies. Biggest thing I learned was what I already knew - I don't do well in corporate environments. The money, benefits and working conditions were all good. My boss shielded me from the corporate wonks - he and I would work out the assignments as peers, and then I'd execute them. When he left, I foundered badly - I couldn't find the next most necessary business need. I did work, but not much value adding work. Without that shield, the corporate types found me, and hung me out to dry.
So, I'm hitting the bricks. I haven't been unemployed in over 20 years. At this moment, I feel relieved to be out of corporate-land. But, I've got a mortgage, car payments, an artist wife with a sporadic income, etc. I'll probably, (and hopefully) be in "cube-ville" sometime in the next three or four months.
Unless you can think of alternatives?
- Brick-bound
Dear Bricked ...
Sorry to hear it didn't turn out well. If I can do some inferring, it sounds like the transition that followed the acquisition wasn't handled well by just about anyone. I'd be very surprised if sales fell apart because all of a sudden your products and services were of no value in the marketplace after decades of success.
My guess is that the acquiring company didn't do enough to prevent the resentment that's otherwise inevitable following an acquisition; the local leadership either enjoyed the resentment as validation of their own worth or just didn't care very much; and the employees, with no leadership from either direction, lamented the loss of what had been a very good work environment.
Just a guess.
It is, by the way, strange that this is how most employees respond to an acquisition. If they resent anyone they should resent the old owner who decided to sell. The buying company is investing its capital in the company and its employees. They should be flattered. It rarely works out that way.
Your assessment of your own departure is probably accurate so far as it goes. The one point I'll add to it is that if the CRM upgrade went poorly and your name was on it, that was probably an important contributing factor. Opinion: Big project + New owners = Chance to shine.
You gave them a different equation: Challenged project + Disloyal employee = Easy decision.
My advice: From our previous correspondence you're on the upside of fifty. Look for positions where experience and judgment matters as much or more than technical skill. Also, you succeeded best running a small IT shop in a small business. Approach every small business owner you can to sell yourself and what you can do. Many of these folks will have one sharp person who is, shall we say, in an early career stage, with more enthusiasm than mature business judgment and limited ability to communicate with the owner.
You have a better story to tell in this sort of environment than for a big corporation.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
How do you review an employee who is basically good, but has some blind spots?
I have one staffer who does fine, fine work - he's thorough, he's careful, he is one of the better server admins out there.
Only problem is that he has some end-user client responsibilities, too. And he falls down on some of that. I recently found out that he'd outsourced the replacement of a laptop to the staffer who was experiencing problems (e.g., made them make the calls to the manufacturer, et cetera). Granted, English isn't his first language, and affects his desire to be on the phone. I pointed out that it's IT's assigned job to deal directly with this class of problem, to be the interface between the user and the vendor, and got an argument that the vendor needed to talk to the person who was directly experiencing the problem.
How do you deal with that? Because in his own way, he was right - he'd basically be passing through requests from the vendor. OTOH, since it's our charter to be the interface, I need to impress on him that our value comes from ensuring incrementally better results than the user can get by themselves and to provide a unified point of contact, as in "IT can fix that..."
- Reviewing my options
Dear Reviewing ...
It's easier than you might think.
In fact, the question you asked - how do you review the employee - is quite simple:
Beyond the reasons you already gave is this, very simple point: End-users aren't experts in technology. If the end-user calls the manufacturer, chances are pretty good that:
Depending on the employee's value in other areas, I suppose you could also give him the option of opting out of this category of work in exchange for a downgrade of his title and compensation.
If your shop is large enough and you think he has a point, you could also decide to accept his advice (because it's good advice, not because he's taken you to the mat and won) and reorganize so that end-user support becomes a separate specialty.
If you decide this is the route to go, you still have to take the step of making note of his refusal to accept an assignment in his performance appraisal. His being right organizationally doesn’t make his behavior acceptable.
If any employee simply says no, it's time for disciplinary action. Managers do have the authority to give specific work assignments, and every employee has to accept the sad reality that not all work is 100% fun.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
I'm having a little trouble seeing the (IMHO subtle) difference between assessing and measuring (see "Taking the measure of IT professionals," Keep the Joint Running, 11/5/2007). It seems to me that the way you have defined assessing, it is no different than measuring.
It is not as simple as assembly line work to be sure. But you have spelled out 6 criteria:
1. What did you do?
2. What did you miss?
3. How do you compare?
4. What you did you do on your own initiative?
5. Did you support the team?
6. Did you exercise good judgment?
One and two are pretty quantifiable, they measure assignments. Three is grading on a curve. Four is did you go above and beyond the call of duty, pass/fail. Five and six may not be quantifiable, but you can site instances where they did or did not happen, pass/fail again.
So it is not as straight forward as widgets/hour + defects/widget, but it is still a measurement.
- Measurer
Dear Measurer ...
"Measurement" has been defined and redefined enough times that there are those who use it to refer to any form of assessment. In my opinion, this has had two effects, neither of them good. The first is to make it harder to understand what someone means when they say "measurement." The other is to make the job of assessing employee performance seem more scientific than it really is.
"What did you do/not do" aren't the least bit quantitative, except for assembly line work. I suppose you could try - you could assign weighting factors to each accomplishment and total them all up. In the end, you'll still just be translating judgment to a number.
Pitching in certainly isn't pass/fail. It's a matter of extent. Highly variable and highly subjective.
The same is true of supporting colleagues. It isn't pass/fail. It's how much, and there's no way to objectively measure it.
Same comment on judgment. There are only shades of gray here and discussions about the manager's opinion, the employee's opinion, how the employee arrived at decisions, and the manager's ability to coach and guide.
There are those who consider every form of assessment a measurement. I've even heard non-quantitative adjectives called measures - "orange," for example.
All it does is confuse the conversation.
In my measurably humble opinion, at least.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
Just read your excellent Keep the Joint Running of 11/5, ("Taking the measure of IT professionals,") and your comments about teamwork reminded me of something:
Why is it that so many managers confuse cheerleaders with team players? I liked your description of what team players do (align to a common purpose, trust each other, communicate well, and help each other out) -- excellent brief description.
Cheerleaders are full of encouraging comments and catchy phrases, and that's usually the extent of it. In my experience, the cheerleaders are usually the politicians, good at looking good, but (usually) not very productive.
I'd like to see your thoughts on this in KJR someday. I can't think of a catchy ManagementSpeak translation, but maybe you can ...
- Cheerily lead
Dear Pb ...
Well I certainly agree, cheerleaders are good at looking good. It's part of the job description.
I suppose one of these days what I should really write is an apology to all cheerleaders. Real cheerleaders are excellent athletes who work very hard at their trade.
Unlike those in the corporate world to whom we apply the metaphor.
If we were to apply the metaphor much further we might find ourselves concluding that corporate cheerleaders really are team players who contribute value. In theory at least, cheerleaders get the crowd riled up, which in turn helps energize the team on the field, which contributes to winning the game.
I don't know if it really works that way, but it is the idea.
Enough of that. I think your point, and mine as well, is that cheerleading is an important role for both leaders and team members, but it's an ancillary role, not the main event. Anyone who counts cheerleading as their most important contribution needs to gain some additional skills.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
This is "Budgeting" with a follow-up question (from "Penetrating the mysteries of IT budgeting," Advice Line, 11/7/2007).
All of what you say makes sense – especially in a large organization where duties and responsibilities are separate and clear-cut.
We are small, with multiple-hats, and our IS Governance = Administration. Unfortunately, and in keeping with the industry – too often the Project is not based on business case –but "Dr. Squeaky Wheel."
We have done most, if not all, of what you suggest – formally and informally. I guess I was hoping for a magic way to quantify; a "number" that says, "see – we have a Project Complexity score of 4.29 so we have justified the need for 1.5 Analysts and .5 Help desk staff ..."
Have any magic?
- (Still) Budgeting
Dear Budgeting ...
Ah … you're looking for Function Point Analysis. Not for the faint of heart. I can't endorse it myself - every time I get close to it I find myself wondering, "Would the end-users recognize a function point when it comes up on the screen?"
I know practitioners who claim it allows them to estimate projects with high levels of precision.
My personal opinion: The best way to estimate projects is to break them into small chunks with go/no-go gates in between. That allows you to avoid estimating how long it will take to build a system before you've decided what has to go into it.
The waterfall version looks like this:
1. High and mid-level business process redesign that includes the role the system plays in the new process (this substitutes for "Requirements") and is more valuable. One of the deliverables is the Statement of Work and estimate for the next phase, which is …
2. Either product selection (if you're going to buy and integrate) or system specifications, along with a more detailed business process design. One of the deliverables is the Statement of Work and estimate for the next phase, which is …
3. Either construction or installation and integration. This very well might be a multi-phased effort depending on the scope of the redesign. One of the deliverables is the Statement of Work and estimate for the roll-out phase.
An alternative, which I increasingly like as I grow older and less energetic, is to assign one programmer/analyst to a business change effort. The P/A sits with the end-users, learns their job, helps them think about the next logical and easy-to-implement process improvement, and makes whatever system changes are necessary to make it possible. Then they do the next one.
It's business improvement through the removal of small annoyances. It can be surprisingly effective, and makes resource planning easy. What it doesn't let you do easily is predict when you'll reach the point of diminishing returns on the improvement effort so you can redeploy your P/A to the next one.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
Over the years you have emphasized the important of a project having an executive sponsor. What do you do when you cannot find a single person who will ultimately take ownership for a project?
In our recent case, we had a project with marketing and finance components. In reality, marketing hasn’t been too concerned about how their requirements impact finance, and finance has shown no desire to own the process. Since both share the use of IT, IT has ended up owning the business knowledge and tried to keep to two areas happy.
As we embarked on our new project, mainly to rewrite a system that fell behind on following business rules, we found once again that each area was more concerned about their part of the business. Marketing was shocked to learn that finance didn’t know about all the changes they made over the years and finance emphasized the accounting rules they needed to follow.
The two business areas have different executive leaders who report to the CEO.
The obvious answer was to not do the project without proper sponsorship. Since there were identified issues with customer billing, IT felt the project needed to be forced through. Now that the project is getting close to complete, the original dysfunction is showing up again, leading to potential long-term failure of the rewrite.
This is a common scenario for teams, how do you recommend we can improve on the process of ownership?
– Stuck in silos
Dear Silo-stuck …
Back when I was in college, a popular form of revenge was to fill a mailing envelope with shaving cream, insert the open end under the offender's dorm room door, and drop a dictionary on the envelope.
If you're going to insist on a more mature solution …
Three possibilities occur to me and they aren't mutually exclusive. They are:
1. Get the two offenders in a room (preferably before the project starts) and persuade them that they need to co-sponsor the project. In order for this to happen, you have to persuade them that their parts of the business will face serious hardships if the replacement system doesn't get done. If neither will face serious hardships, the project isn't that important anyway. To them.
2. Find another officer who will experience significant pain without the replacement system. In many situations, Internal Audit or the General Counsel will do nicely, since out-of-date business rules sounds like it might result in unnecessary exposure to compliance problems.
3. Escalate to the CEO. There are times when every silo does fine - it's merely the whole corporation that suffers. That's the case every time a system optimizes the parts at the expense of the whole, in fact. This option should, when done correctly, result in your making use of the first option as well. The CEO would serve as "Executive Sponsor," the two business directors would serve as "Business Sponsors," and the three together would serve as the project steering committee.
I'll also say this: At some point, no matter how important a project is to the business, IT can't ignore what decades of experience have demonstrated: If nobody in the business cares about a project, it will fail. Since it will fail anyway, it might as well fail in the chartering stage, before IT expends time and effort making the actual system happen.
- Bob
[The inquiry that follows is edited down from a longer version. I hope I've left its points intact. - Bob]
Dear Bob ...
I've been enjoying your columns on compensation ("Poor Joe" and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running, 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007). I think your "4 variable" plan is great (I'm trying to find a way to clandestinely leave it somewhere my boss can't miss it). They've really got me thinking...
As you might gather from the Boss comment, my personal experience has been that most organizations rely primarily (if not exclusively) on the first two factors (Base and Promotion) when dealing with the majority of their non-executive employees.
As you said in the second column, the benefits of creating and retaining satisfied and productive long-term employees are tough to quantify. Wage and bonus costs are not. In most cases the $20,000 bonus will be seen as twenty grand that didn't get put on the bottom line this year, not as $5000 saved over the next decade.
Despite how earnestly we declare that "were all in this together," the interests of the employee and the interests of the employer really are always divergent when it comes to compensation.
As an employee, no matter how much I love my job and think I'm being treated fairly, I'm still going to have a strong financial incentive to maximize my compensation (for reasons that usually don't have anything to do with the interests of my employer).
Likewise, as an employer, no matter how pleased I am with the value a particular employee provides me, I'm still going to have a strong financial incentive to minimize that employee's compensation.
Now we reach the sticky part...
If managers are doing any sort of decent job, employees will be productive in their current positions, and there won't be a lot of empty holes in "higher tiers" desperately waiting to be filled via promotion.
While this may seem ideal from an organizational standpoint, it's a scenario pretty much designed for hard feelings when it comes to compensation and retention. Since the Org Chart always narrows on the way up, the legitimate number of "next tier" slots will always be MUCH smaller than the number of well-qualified employees from the "lower tier" (this is especially true in smaller shops where there are less slots to begin with, and the folks currently filling them tend to hang around much longer).
This means something has to give - either employees lose their motivation and become complacent, the company starts awarding phony promotions just to placate their ambitious employees who have nowhere to go, or their best employees leave for opportunities elsewhere.
Do you see any way out of all this?
- Gone comp'ing
Dear Gone ...
Here are a few thoughts on some of your key points:
Keep in mind that well-run companies generally grow, and growth creates more room for the best employees to take on additional responsibility. What's tough is re-setting everyone's expectations so that career growth doesn't translate to ladder-like elevation in the hierarchy. It's tough enough among the employees who want their careers to progress. It's even tougher among the managers and executives who are prone to think their titles and proximity to the CEO make them special.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
OK, I like what you have said and the questions you have raised concerning employee compensation (in "Poor Joe" and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running, 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007). I have a related issue you may like to consider.
It is that time of year, again, in most organizations, where we need to develop next year’s budget. Like many other companies this year, we need to look at ways to cut expenses - at the same time that we (in IS) are being asked to tackle several major, complex projects - involving system-wide impacts, multiple interfaces, all users, and not to mention continuing support of our existing applications.
Sound familiar? The list of projects would lean towards the addition of staff, not reduction or maintenance of status quo.
The conventional logic is that "census" is down, revenues are down, and therefore we must reduce expenses: translation - no more staff.
In IT, the workload is not a function of the in-patient or out-patient census. Our workload is a reflection of such things as:
It may be a useless endeavor, but it is very difficult to talk numbers to Accountants without some number.
So – thoughts? Ideas? Any research out there? Have I snorted too much coffee, resulting in total malfunction of my two remaining synapses?
- Budgeting
Dear Budgeting ...
Just my opinion: You'd be better off drinking your coffee than snorting it. Tough on the nasal septum. Trust me on this.
Just my opinion on the question you asked: You are, for the most part, on the right track. Your next step is to segment IS, because different areas of responsibility have different staffing drivers. So:
Major projects: Staffing is purely a function of your company's IS Governance process. The more projects they approve, the bigger they are, and the more they want to have happen concurrently, the more staff you need for them.
Discretionary enhancements: Similar answer, only governance for discretionary enhancements shouldn't be the same process. I usually prefer to handle these as a budgeted allocation, but instead of having a dollar budget, department heads receive an allocation of developer hours. The IS Governance committee (or whatever) is responsible for establishing this allocation. The more enhancements they want to have happen concurrently, the larger the budget.
Non-discretionary maintenance: It's non-discretionary. Inform the IS Governance committee of the staffing required for this. To take the sting out of future staffing requirements, make sure every project's business case includes the impact on maintenance staffing.
Discretionary infrastructure: This category supports infrastructure build-outs for new facilities, remodeling efforts, departmental moves and so on. Let business plans drive it. If the answer is, "We don't know what will be required next year," it's perfectly fair to respond, "Then it's awfully hard to predict what staffing we'll need to support it. For now, I suggest we leave last year's staffing alone, assuming we'll have to deal with the same level of requirement this year."
IS Operations: This is where servers per sysadmin ratios and that sort of thing come into play. I'd advise including a continuous improvement target in your ratios - as staff get better, processes improve and you improve your infrastructure, each sysadmin should be able to handle more servers.
End-user support: This is the biggest challenge. Start with the current ratio of end-users to analysts. Then propose three alternatives - one based on reduced support, one supporting at current levels, and one that invests in maximizing business user effectiveness. There are severe limits on the possibility of continuous improvement in this area because most of the improvements that would let you increase the end-user/analyst ratio depend on improvements in your end-users, not your analysts.
I've probably left out a few areas of responsibility, in part because they depend on how you're organized (do you have a separate Architecture function to house your DBAs/Data Analysts, for example). You can apply the same sort of thinking to these as well.
- Bob
Dear Bob ...
Your compensation model is just fine (see "Poor Joe," and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007) ... except that some of the folks who migrate to IT see variable and spot bonuses as insults.
In a firm founded by a salesman, the comp model followed your four components [base, variable, promotions and spot bonuses - Bob]. The technical staff were just fine with base and promotional compensation.
When the subject of variable comp and "spifs" (especially spifs) came up, the tech staff turned ugly. Most were uncomfortable with the variable comp and some attempted to negotiate a higher base without the variable. ("we are professionals not prostitutes" was one recurring remark).
The founder was confounded. He had never dealt with such a unreasonable group. The spifs were seen as an embarrassment and/or insult ("we aren't used car salesmen"). One turned down a spif awarded in an "all hands" meeting. This really torqued the boss.
Comp has to also fit the nature of those receiving the comp. Even if it is Joe Torre.
- Comp'ed
Dear Comp'ed
I have to wonder if the tech staff was insulted or worried. Pay for performance entails risk as well as reward.
Probably, the CEO explained it in salesforce terms, which compounded the felony. Many sales professionals are more strongly motivated by the chance of additional money than most other employees, so the communication with them is about their opportunity to earn more commission.
Tech staff tend to be more motivated by a sense of achievement. Explaining the comp program in engineering terms is a more sensible choice for them.
At the end of the conversation, it comes down to this: If you perform well this year, should I pay you for it this year, or should I pay you for it forever?
When you phrase the question like this, the answer seems pretty clear.
- Bob
The comments posted in response to my recent Advice Line postings about the legitimacy of lying, deception, withholding information and so on cause me some concern - not because many are critical, but because of the nature of some of the criticism.
So here are my concerns:
Concern #1: Overstating my position. What I've said is that there are circumstances in business that call for something other than full disclosure of the unvarnished honest opinion of the speaker. What I haven't said is that making casual lying a personal habit whenever it's convenient is a good idea.
It isn't, for matters of character, personal effectiveness, and reputation, to name just three.
Concern #2: Strawmen. Really - when I say there are times when failing to tell a falsehood does clear harm and telling one leads to a better outcome, it really isn't legitimate to translate it to, "Bob said lying is a better outcome."
Likewise, I made a point about how to answer a nine-year-old who asks how her first violin performance sounds. One response countered with a conversation with a fifteen-year-old who has been performing (vocals) for awhile.
If the violinist example isn't sufficiently clear, let me ask a question about the hundreds of millions of parents who have, over the years, told their young children about Santa Claus. Were they good parents, or vile liars?
Concern #3: Cruelty. Sometimes you have to terminate an employee for non-performance. That doesn't make the employee a bad person. Beyond that, publicly humiliating someone as part of a termination is more than unethical (according to my system of ethics) - it can land a company in court for defamation of character.
Allowing the employee to resign, and to decide how to explain his/her departure to colleagues, is an act of kindness and professionalism. If every other employee easily sees through the cover story they won't consider it a failure of integrity on the part of the manager. They'll interpret it as an act of compassion.
I don't much care personally about the criticism. Generating discussion is what Advice Line is all about.
My concern is this: Managers and professionals who make use of these polemical techniques on their staff or co-workers will find they damage their credibility and ability to collaborate at least as much as telling them Fred left under his own steam so as to concentrate on pursuing a new career direction.
- Bob
November 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Dear Bob ...
Do many companies have the policy of down-rating annual raises when the rate is close to the band cap? I understand that one part of that is to motivate the employee to do enough to get promoted (stop complacency).
However, that backfires when there's no job band available to be promoted into. Then the employee is faced with acceptable reviews, with annual raises more like those given to employees with sub-par performance ratings (mixed message there), and no where to go but out.
- Capped
Dear Capped ...
Most do. It has nothing to do with motivation and everything to do with basing compensation on the labor marketplace. If a company were to continue to give salary increases for someone at top of band, the company would have a financial incentive to replace the employee with another who could provide equivalent services for less.
The smart ones recognize the de-motivating aspect of having compensation fail to reflect strong performance, and provide a one-time bonus since a salary increase isn't possible.
For more on this subject (if you missed the original columns), see "Poor Joe" and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running, 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 30, 2007 07:32 AM
November 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Placing IT effectiveness on the org chart
Dear Bob ...
I am interested if you know of organizations that have an IT Effectiveness manager in their organizational structure. If so, where in the org chart does it fit, who does it report to?
- Organizing
Dear Organizing ...
Not that I know of as a separate organizational function. Personally, I figure it's a core responsibility of the CIO and the IT management team.
What are often put into a separate organizations are implementation projects for making IT more effective - ITIL and systems management efforts, for example. These are generally chartered as projects. I suppose you could view the project teams as temporary departments.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 28, 2007 05:45 AM
November 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Outsourced during a deathmarch
Dear Bob ...
My department is being outsourced. Two people are here until April 15th. I'm not one of them. The other two, the supervisor and I, are gone December 31st.
We are in the middle of a huge application upgrade that management hopes to have completed by the end of the year. (Actually, they wanted it out last month, but the developers keep releasing buggy versions and our mainframe team haven't provided us good data for testing.)
The program runs as a single-user app in the field and as a multi-user app in-house. I'm in charge of that. Preparing the upgrade will be a pain, but I can do it. However, the actually upgrade is a nightmare. I've done two small ones so far this year, and this will be larger and more complicated.
For each of the last two upgrades, I had to be in the office for my usual six-to-eight-hour shift. Then I would go home and spend eight hours a night and 8-10 hours per day on the weekends doing the upgrades. Last time I literally worked 90-100 hours per week for two weeks straight.
I was willing to do it then because historically, we have received comp time for that sort of effort. My supervisor--the one being laid off at the same time I am--is very lax about things like my leaving early now and then BECAUSE I am willing to make that sort of a commitment. Also, there had been talk of bonuses and promotions.
Bonuses are given in the spring, and I won't be here.
In addition to simply being unwilling now, I'm not even sure I have the time. I've made commitments for volunteer work associated with the holiday season. I'm already spending 4-6 hours per night on that. I have a job hunt, I have holiday preparations like everyone else, and to top it all off, my landlord is evicting me for unrelated issues and I have to find a new place to live.
If I were the boss, and my soon-to-be-laid-off employee told me what this job entails, I'd offer some compensation. Of course, that's probably why I'm not in management.
I'm salaried, and I understand that sometimes I have to work more than forty hours in a week. But something is very off about this situation and I have no idea what to do other than buckle down and spend a few long, sleepless weeks.
Help me, Obi-Bob Kenobi. You're my only hope.
- Paduan
Dear Paduan ...
Here's my thinking: You have an obligation to be professional about how you handle your current assignment. That obligation is to yourself, not to anyone else. You'll feel better about yourself if you handle things professionally. And you've built quite a few personal relationships which you want to preserve through this transition. You'll bump into some of these individuals again throughout your career. You want them to remember you in a good light.
Both of these results matter to you.
You also have an obligation to yourself to look out for your own interests first. Nobody else in this equation will do so, which means if you don't, your interests will go unrepresented.
You and your supervisor, or perhaps just you, have to get in front of the project manager, project sponsor, "management" (whoever that is), or some combination and present them with some alternatives that will get the job done for the company.
First, let them know how many hours of effort will be required between now and successful delivery of your responsibilities, based on your experience with the earlier upgrades. Second, review with them the alternatives for the company to get this one finished:
- The company can move the deadline and you'll do your part to ensure a smooth transition to the outsourcing team, which can finish the upgrade. "Do your part" means an honest week's work for an honest week's pay, nothing more - something you don't have to state, but do have to decide for yourself. Later on you might have to hold the line, refusing to meet or work beyond reasonable work hours, Monday through Friday.
- The company can move the deadline and your termination date. You'll do your part to complete it on the new schedule with the same unstated definition of "do your part."
- The company can keep the deadline and pay you additional money for your additional hours. Time-and-a-half is customary. That gives you enough financial cushion that you can delay starting your job search: If you work an 80-hour week, you'll earn enough to cover one and a half unemployed weeks.
Then go back to your desk, document the conversation, and give your employer an honest week's work for an honest week's pay, every remaining week until December 31st ... and nothing more than that. If this is a project with weekly status meetings, provide honest updates each week and honest assessments of what is required to make the final deadline.
When your departure date arrives, the upgrade isn't complete, and someone asks, point out that you informed them of what would be required for you to finish the upgrade, and they chose to not take any of the actions required. Show them where you've left all of the files and documentation required for your replacement to finish the work, pack your box, and leave. Let whoever asks know that you are willing to work as a subcontractor for the outsourcer until the upgrade is complete, if that's of any interest.
You'll know that at least one of the people involved in this situation handled it professionally. That it was you but not company management is not your problem.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 27, 2007 06:27 AM
November 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)
One that didn't turn out so well
Dear Bob ...
Back in February, I had written to you about struggling to maintain my position in the midst of changes brought about by a corporate buy out. Things looked pretty good back then.
And then, they didn't.
Biggest problem was the numbers, of course. While we made money last year, we didn't make our targets.
This year, we didn't even make money.
You could feel the drum start beating at the home office, far in the distance. Every week, there were more questions from corporate about sales, and every week the reports showed a downturn in revenues.
For my part, managing the upgrade to our CRM system went badly. It was nearly six months before everything was working as it should.
More drums from corporate.
Last month, the corporate folks started walking around the office on a regular basis. They didn't even ask many questions - at least not of me.
Turns out they were subtly interviewing the employees. When they had enough data, the Office Operations Manager and I were both "made redundant."
While no reasons were given other than job elimination, I figure there were two primary causes:
1. As Napoleon said, "pour encourager les autres." In other words, when the chips are down, and the performance returns aren't there, fire a couple of managers, just to drive home the point that you've got to make money for the business to stay employed.
2. My own damn fault. I was very loyal to my boss. After he was ousted from the company three months ago, I told too many folks how bitter I was about losing him. This was also true of the OOM as well. A number of employees also voiced such opinions - they still have jobs. But then, see item 1.
Well, as someone pointed out, I had ten good years at the company. I learned a lot, did a lot, made some good friends, and a few enemies. Biggest thing I learned was what I already knew - I don't do well in corporate environments. The money, benefits and working conditions were all good. My boss shielded me from the corporate wonks - he and I would work out the assignments as peers, and then I'd execute them. When he left, I foundered badly - I couldn't find the next most necessary business need. I did work, but not much value adding work. Without that shield, the corporate types found me, and hung me out to dry.
So, I'm hitting the bricks. I haven't been unemployed in over 20 years. At this moment, I feel relieved to be out of corporate-land. But, I've got a mortgage, car payments, an artist wife with a sporadic income, etc. I'll probably, (and hopefully) be in "cube-ville" sometime in the next three or four months.
Unless you can think of alternatives?
- Brick-bound
Dear Bricked ...
Sorry to hear it didn't turn out well. If I can do some inferring, it sounds like the transition that followed the acquisition wasn't handled well by just about anyone. I'd be very surprised if sales fell apart because all of a sudden your products and services were of no value in the marketplace after decades of success.
My guess is that the acquiring company didn't do enough to prevent the resentment that's otherwise inevitable following an acquisition; the local leadership either enjoyed the resentment as validation of their own worth or just didn't care very much; and the employees, with no leadership from either direction, lamented the loss of what had been a very good work environment.
Just a guess.
It is, by the way, strange that this is how most employees respond to an acquisition. If they resent anyone they should resent the old owner who decided to sell. The buying company is investing its capital in the company and its employees. They should be flattered. It rarely works out that way.
Your assessment of your own departure is probably accurate so far as it goes. The one point I'll add to it is that if the CRM upgrade went poorly and your name was on it, that was probably an important contributing factor. Opinion: Big project + New owners = Chance to shine.
You gave them a different equation: Challenged project + Disloyal employee = Easy decision.
My advice: From our previous correspondence you're on the upside of fifty. Look for positions where experience and judgment matters as much or more than technical skill. Also, you succeeded best running a small IT shop in a small business. Approach every small business owner you can to sell yourself and what you can do. Many of these folks will have one sharp person who is, shall we say, in an early career stage, with more enthusiasm than mature business judgment and limited ability to communicate with the owner.
You have a better story to tell in this sort of environment than for a big corporation.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 23, 2007 07:55 AM
November 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Reviewing mostly good employees
Dear Bob ...
How do you review an employee who is basically good, but has some blind spots?
I have one staffer who does fine, fine work - he's thorough, he's careful, he is one of the better server admins out there.
Only problem is that he has some end-user client responsibilities, too. And he falls down on some of that. I recently found out that he'd outsourced the replacement of a laptop to the staffer who was experiencing problems (e.g., made them make the calls to the manufacturer, et cetera). Granted, English isn't his first language, and affects his desire to be on the phone. I pointed out that it's IT's assigned job to deal directly with this class of problem, to be the interface between the user and the vendor, and got an argument that the vendor needed to talk to the person who was directly experiencing the problem.
How do you deal with that? Because in his own way, he was right - he'd basically be passing through requests from the vendor. OTOH, since it's our charter to be the interface, I need to impress on him that our value comes from ensuring incrementally better results than the user can get by themselves and to provide a unified point of contact, as in "IT can fix that..."
- Reviewing my options
Dear Reviewing ...
It's easier than you might think.
In fact, the question you asked - how do you review the employee - is quite simple:
- Effectively administers systems - exceeds expectations.
- Effectively troubleshoots technical problems - exceeds expectations.
- Works well with end-users and maintains good external relationships - needs improvement.
Beyond the reasons you already gave is this, very simple point: End-users aren't experts in technology. If the end-user calls the manufacturer, chances are pretty good that:
- The end-user will mis-report the actual problem, leading the vendor on a wild goose chase for awhile.
- The vendor will lead the end-user through the standard litany of reboot, re-install, reboot again and re-install again - the level one technician drill. Technical staff can more easily penetrate the nonsense to get to someone who can diagnose and fix the actual problem.
Depending on the employee's value in other areas, I suppose you could also give him the option of opting out of this category of work in exchange for a downgrade of his title and compensation.
If your shop is large enough and you think he has a point, you could also decide to accept his advice (because it's good advice, not because he's taken you to the mat and won) and reorganize so that end-user support becomes a separate specialty.
If you decide this is the route to go, you still have to take the step of making note of his refusal to accept an assignment in his performance appraisal. His being right organizationally doesn’t make his behavior acceptable.
If any employee simply says no, it's time for disciplinary action. Managers do have the authority to give specific work assignments, and every employee has to accept the sad reality that not all work is 100% fun.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 21, 2007 06:58 AM
November 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Clarifying the difference between assessment and measurement
Dear Bob ...
I'm having a little trouble seeing the (IMHO subtle) difference between assessing and measuring (see "Taking the measure of IT professionals," Keep the Joint Running, 11/5/2007). It seems to me that the way you have defined assessing, it is no different than measuring.
It is not as simple as assembly line work to be sure. But you have spelled out 6 criteria:
1. What did you do?
2. What did you miss?
3. How do you compare?
4. What you did you do on your own initiative?
5. Did you support the team?
6. Did you exercise good judgment?
One and two are pretty quantifiable, they measure assignments. Three is grading on a curve. Four is did you go above and beyond the call of duty, pass/fail. Five and six may not be quantifiable, but you can site instances where they did or did not happen, pass/fail again.
So it is not as straight forward as widgets/hour + defects/widget, but it is still a measurement.
- Measurer
Dear Measurer ...
"Measurement" has been defined and redefined enough times that there are those who use it to refer to any form of assessment. In my opinion, this has had two effects, neither of them good. The first is to make it harder to understand what someone means when they say "measurement." The other is to make the job of assessing employee performance seem more scientific than it really is.
"What did you do/not do" aren't the least bit quantitative, except for assembly line work. I suppose you could try - you could assign weighting factors to each accomplishment and total them all up. In the end, you'll still just be translating judgment to a number.
Pitching in certainly isn't pass/fail. It's a matter of extent. Highly variable and highly subjective.
The same is true of supporting colleagues. It isn't pass/fail. It's how much, and there's no way to objectively measure it.
Same comment on judgment. There are only shades of gray here and discussions about the manager's opinion, the employee's opinion, how the employee arrived at decisions, and the manager's ability to coach and guide.
There are those who consider every form of assessment a measurement. I've even heard non-quantitative adjectives called measures - "orange," for example.
All it does is confuse the conversation.
In my measurably humble opinion, at least.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 20, 2007 10:36 AM
November 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The (limited) value of corporate cheerleaders
Dear Bob ...
Just read your excellent Keep the Joint Running of 11/5, ("Taking the measure of IT professionals,") and your comments about teamwork reminded me of something:
Why is it that so many managers confuse cheerleaders with team players? I liked your description of what team players do (align to a common purpose, trust each other, communicate well, and help each other out) -- excellent brief description.
Cheerleaders are full of encouraging comments and catchy phrases, and that's usually the extent of it. In my experience, the cheerleaders are usually the politicians, good at looking good, but (usually) not very productive.
I'd like to see your thoughts on this in KJR someday. I can't think of a catchy ManagementSpeak translation, but maybe you can ...
- Cheerily lead
Dear Pb ...
Well I certainly agree, cheerleaders are good at looking good. It's part of the job description.
I suppose one of these days what I should really write is an apology to all cheerleaders. Real cheerleaders are excellent athletes who work very hard at their trade.
Unlike those in the corporate world to whom we apply the metaphor.
If we were to apply the metaphor much further we might find ourselves concluding that corporate cheerleaders really are team players who contribute value. In theory at least, cheerleaders get the crowd riled up, which in turn helps energize the team on the field, which contributes to winning the game.
I don't know if it really works that way, but it is the idea.
Enough of that. I think your point, and mine as well, is that cheerleading is an important role for both leaders and team members, but it's an ancillary role, not the main event. Anyone who counts cheerleading as their most important contribution needs to gain some additional skills.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 19, 2007 05:32 PM
November 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The magic formula for IT budgeting
Dear Bob ...
This is "Budgeting" with a follow-up question (from "Penetrating the mysteries of IT budgeting," Advice Line, 11/7/2007).
All of what you say makes sense – especially in a large organization where duties and responsibilities are separate and clear-cut.
We are small, with multiple-hats, and our IS Governance = Administration. Unfortunately, and in keeping with the industry – too often the Project is not based on business case –but "Dr. Squeaky Wheel."
We have done most, if not all, of what you suggest – formally and informally. I guess I was hoping for a magic way to quantify; a "number" that says, "see – we have a Project Complexity score of 4.29 so we have justified the need for 1.5 Analysts and .5 Help desk staff ..."
Have any magic?
- (Still) Budgeting
Dear Budgeting ...
Ah … you're looking for Function Point Analysis. Not for the faint of heart. I can't endorse it myself - every time I get close to it I find myself wondering, "Would the end-users recognize a function point when it comes up on the screen?"
I know practitioners who claim it allows them to estimate projects with high levels of precision.
My personal opinion: The best way to estimate projects is to break them into small chunks with go/no-go gates in between. That allows you to avoid estimating how long it will take to build a system before you've decided what has to go into it.
The waterfall version looks like this:
1. High and mid-level business process redesign that includes the role the system plays in the new process (this substitutes for "Requirements") and is more valuable. One of the deliverables is the Statement of Work and estimate for the next phase, which is …
2. Either product selection (if you're going to buy and integrate) or system specifications, along with a more detailed business process design. One of the deliverables is the Statement of Work and estimate for the next phase, which is …
3. Either construction or installation and integration. This very well might be a multi-phased effort depending on the scope of the redesign. One of the deliverables is the Statement of Work and estimate for the roll-out phase.
An alternative, which I increasingly like as I grow older and less energetic, is to assign one programmer/analyst to a business change effort. The P/A sits with the end-users, learns their job, helps them think about the next logical and easy-to-implement process improvement, and makes whatever system changes are necessary to make it possible. Then they do the next one.
It's business improvement through the removal of small annoyances. It can be surprisingly effective, and makes resource planning easy. What it doesn't let you do easily is predict when you'll reach the point of diminishing returns on the improvement effort so you can redeploy your P/A to the next one.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 14, 2007 06:13 AM
November 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
When IT is up the creek without a sponsor
Dear Bob ...
Over the years you have emphasized the important of a project having an executive sponsor. What do you do when you cannot find a single person who will ultimately take ownership for a project?
In our recent case, we had a project with marketing and finance components. In reality, marketing hasn’t been too concerned about how their requirements impact finance, and finance has shown no desire to own the process. Since both share the use of IT, IT has ended up owning the business knowledge and tried to keep to two areas happy.
As we embarked on our new project, mainly to rewrite a system that fell behind on following business rules, we found once again that each area was more concerned about their part of the business. Marketing was shocked to learn that finance didn’t know about all the changes they made over the years and finance emphasized the accounting rules they needed to follow.
The two business areas have different executive leaders who report to the CEO.
The obvious answer was to not do the project without proper sponsorship. Since there were identified issues with customer billing, IT felt the project needed to be forced through. Now that the project is getting close to complete, the original dysfunction is showing up again, leading to potential long-term failure of the rewrite.
This is a common scenario for teams, how do you recommend we can improve on the process of ownership?
– Stuck in silos
Dear Silo-stuck …
Back when I was in college, a popular form of revenge was to fill a mailing envelope with shaving cream, insert the open end under the offender's dorm room door, and drop a dictionary on the envelope.
If you're going to insist on a more mature solution …
Three possibilities occur to me and they aren't mutually exclusive. They are:
1. Get the two offenders in a room (preferably before the project starts) and persuade them that they need to co-sponsor the project. In order for this to happen, you have to persuade them that their parts of the business will face serious hardships if the replacement system doesn't get done. If neither will face serious hardships, the project isn't that important anyway. To them.
2. Find another officer who will experience significant pain without the replacement system. In many situations, Internal Audit or the General Counsel will do nicely, since out-of-date business rules sounds like it might result in unnecessary exposure to compliance problems.
3. Escalate to the CEO. There are times when every silo does fine - it's merely the whole corporation that suffers. That's the case every time a system optimizes the parts at the expense of the whole, in fact. This option should, when done correctly, result in your making use of the first option as well. The CEO would serve as "Executive Sponsor," the two business directors would serve as "Business Sponsors," and the three together would serve as the project steering committee.
I'll also say this: At some point, no matter how important a project is to the business, IT can't ignore what decades of experience have demonstrated: If nobody in the business cares about a project, it will fail. Since it will fail anyway, it might as well fail in the chartering stage, before IT expends time and effort making the actual system happen.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 13, 2007 10:36 AM
November 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)
[The inquiry that follows is edited down from a longer version. I hope I've left its points intact. - Bob]
Dear Bob ...
I've been enjoying your columns on compensation ("Poor Joe" and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running, 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007). I think your "4 variable" plan is great (I'm trying to find a way to clandestinely leave it somewhere my boss can't miss it). They've really got me thinking...
As you might gather from the Boss comment, my personal experience has been that most organizations rely primarily (if not exclusively) on the first two factors (Base and Promotion) when dealing with the majority of their non-executive employees.
As you said in the second column, the benefits of creating and retaining satisfied and productive long-term employees are tough to quantify. Wage and bonus costs are not. In most cases the $20,000 bonus will be seen as twenty grand that didn't get put on the bottom line this year, not as $5000 saved over the next decade.
Despite how earnestly we declare that "were all in this together," the interests of the employee and the interests of the employer really are always divergent when it comes to compensation.
As an employee, no matter how much I love my job and think I'm being treated fairly, I'm still going to have a strong financial incentive to maximize my compensation (for reasons that usually don't have anything to do with the interests of my employer).
Likewise, as an employer, no matter how pleased I am with the value a particular employee provides me, I'm still going to have a strong financial incentive to minimize that employee's compensation.
Now we reach the sticky part...
If managers are doing any sort of decent job, employees will be productive in their current positions, and there won't be a lot of empty holes in "higher tiers" desperately waiting to be filled via promotion.
While this may seem ideal from an organizational standpoint, it's a scenario pretty much designed for hard feelings when it comes to compensation and retention. Since the Org Chart always narrows on the way up, the legitimate number of "next tier" slots will always be MUCH smaller than the number of well-qualified employees from the "lower tier" (this is especially true in smaller shops where there are less slots to begin with, and the folks currently filling them tend to hang around much longer).
This means something has to give - either employees lose their motivation and become complacent, the company starts awarding phony promotions just to placate their ambitious employees who have nowhere to go, or their best employees leave for opportunities elsewhere.
Do you see any way out of all this?
- Gone comp'ing
Dear Gone ...
Here are a few thoughts on some of your key points:
- Are the interests of the employee and employer truly divergent? Of course they are. Replace "employee" with "contractor" and the point is clear: Two self-interested parties have to arrive at an implied contract that results in the exchange of money for services. That isn't a problem. It's in the nature of a system built on balancing supply, demand and price.
- I don't think I've ever said the benefits associated with retaining good employees are hard to quantify. I've read several studies that quantify the cost of replacing experienced ones. The typical finding is that it costs roughly one year's salary.
- Careers getting stuck when retention is good: Quite correct, which is why the best companies (as I define "best") redefine "career." If you consider a career to be a series of assignments and experiences that broaden and deepen your abilities, preparing you for a wider and more responsible variety of roles you can play, then retention creates no barriers to careers.
Keep in mind that well-run companies generally grow, and growth creates more room for the best employees to take on additional responsibility. What's tough is re-setting everyone's expectations so that career growth doesn't translate to ladder-like elevation in the hierarchy. It's tough enough among the employees who want their careers to progress. It's even tougher among the managers and executives who are prone to think their titles and proximity to the CEO make them special.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 9, 2007 01:53 PM
November 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Penetrating the mysteries of IT budgeting
Dear Bob ...
OK, I like what you have said and the questions you have raised concerning employee compensation (in "Poor Joe" and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running, 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007). I have a related issue you may like to consider.
It is that time of year, again, in most organizations, where we need to develop next year’s budget. Like many other companies this year, we need to look at ways to cut expenses - at the same time that we (in IS) are being asked to tackle several major, complex projects - involving system-wide impacts, multiple interfaces, all users, and not to mention continuing support of our existing applications.
Sound familiar? The list of projects would lean towards the addition of staff, not reduction or maintenance of status quo.
The conventional logic is that "census" is down, revenues are down, and therefore we must reduce expenses: translation - no more staff.
In IT, the workload is not a function of the in-patient or out-patient census. Our workload is a reflection of such things as:
- Number of Users
- Complexity of the System (number of interfaces, etc)
- Number of devices to support
- Number of applications to support
- You get the idea ...
It may be a useless endeavor, but it is very difficult to talk numbers to Accountants without some number.
So – thoughts? Ideas? Any research out there? Have I snorted too much coffee, resulting in total malfunction of my two remaining synapses?
- Budgeting
Dear Budgeting ...
Just my opinion: You'd be better off drinking your coffee than snorting it. Tough on the nasal septum. Trust me on this.
Just my opinion on the question you asked: You are, for the most part, on the right track. Your next step is to segment IS, because different areas of responsibility have different staffing drivers. So:
Major projects: Staffing is purely a function of your company's IS Governance process. The more projects they approve, the bigger they are, and the more they want to have happen concurrently, the more staff you need for them.
Discretionary enhancements: Similar answer, only governance for discretionary enhancements shouldn't be the same process. I usually prefer to handle these as a budgeted allocation, but instead of having a dollar budget, department heads receive an allocation of developer hours. The IS Governance committee (or whatever) is responsible for establishing this allocation. The more enhancements they want to have happen concurrently, the larger the budget.
Non-discretionary maintenance: It's non-discretionary. Inform the IS Governance committee of the staffing required for this. To take the sting out of future staffing requirements, make sure every project's business case includes the impact on maintenance staffing.
Discretionary infrastructure: This category supports infrastructure build-outs for new facilities, remodeling efforts, departmental moves and so on. Let business plans drive it. If the answer is, "We don't know what will be required next year," it's perfectly fair to respond, "Then it's awfully hard to predict what staffing we'll need to support it. For now, I suggest we leave last year's staffing alone, assuming we'll have to deal with the same level of requirement this year."
IS Operations: This is where servers per sysadmin ratios and that sort of thing come into play. I'd advise including a continuous improvement target in your ratios - as staff get better, processes improve and you improve your infrastructure, each sysadmin should be able to handle more servers.
End-user support: This is the biggest challenge. Start with the current ratio of end-users to analysts. Then propose three alternatives - one based on reduced support, one supporting at current levels, and one that invests in maximizing business user effectiveness. There are severe limits on the possibility of continuous improvement in this area because most of the improvements that would let you increase the end-user/analyst ratio depend on improvements in your end-users, not your analysts.
I've probably left out a few areas of responsibility, in part because they depend on how you're organized (do you have a separate Architecture function to house your DBAs/Data Analysts, for example). You can apply the same sort of thinking to these as well.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 7, 2007 05:38 AM
November 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Does variable compensation work for IT professionals?
Dear Bob ...
Your compensation model is just fine (see "Poor Joe," and "Comp logic," Keep the Joint Running 10/22/2007 and 10/29/2007) ... except that some of the folks who migrate to IT see variable and spot bonuses as insults.
In a firm founded by a salesman, the comp model followed your four components [base, variable, promotions and spot bonuses - Bob]. The technical staff were just fine with base and promotional compensation.
When the subject of variable comp and "spifs" (especially spifs) came up, the tech staff turned ugly. Most were uncomfortable with the variable comp and some attempted to negotiate a higher base without the variable. ("we are professionals not prostitutes" was one recurring remark).
The founder was confounded. He had never dealt with such a unreasonable group. The spifs were seen as an embarrassment and/or insult ("we aren't used car salesmen"). One turned down a spif awarded in an "all hands" meeting. This really torqued the boss.
Comp has to also fit the nature of those receiving the comp. Even if it is Joe Torre.
- Comp'ed
Dear Comp'ed
I have to wonder if the tech staff was insulted or worried. Pay for performance entails risk as well as reward.
Probably, the CEO explained it in salesforce terms, which compounded the felony. Many sales professionals are more strongly motivated by the chance of additional money than most other employees, so the communication with them is about their opportunity to earn more commission.
Tech staff tend to be more motivated by a sense of achievement. Explaining the comp program in engineering terms is a more sensible choice for them.
At the end of the conversation, it comes down to this: If you perform well this year, should I pay you for it this year, or should I pay you for it forever?
When you phrase the question like this, the answer seems pretty clear.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 5, 2007 05:46 AM
November 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)
One last shot at the ethics of deception
The comments posted in response to my recent Advice Line postings about the legitimacy of lying, deception, withholding information and so on cause me some concern - not because many are critical, but because of the nature of some of the criticism.
So here are my concerns:
Concern #1: Overstating my position. What I've said is that there are circumstances in business that call for something other than full disclosure of the unvarnished honest opinion of the speaker. What I haven't said is that making casual lying a personal habit whenever it's convenient is a good idea.
It isn't, for matters of character, personal effectiveness, and reputation, to name just three.
Concern #2: Strawmen. Really - when I say there are times when failing to tell a falsehood does clear harm and telling one leads to a better outcome, it really isn't legitimate to translate it to, "Bob said lying is a better outcome."
Likewise, I made a point about how to answer a nine-year-old who asks how her first violin performance sounds. One response countered with a conversation with a fifteen-year-old who has been performing (vocals) for awhile.
If the violinist example isn't sufficiently clear, let me ask a question about the hundreds of millions of parents who have, over the years, told their young children about Santa Claus. Were they good parents, or vile liars?
Concern #3: Cruelty. Sometimes you have to terminate an employee for non-performance. That doesn't make the employee a bad person. Beyond that, publicly humiliating someone as part of a termination is more than unethical (according to my system of ethics) - it can land a company in court for defamation of character.
Allowing the employee to resign, and to decide how to explain his/her departure to colleagues, is an act of kindness and professionalism. If every other employee easily sees through the cover story they won't consider it a failure of integrity on the part of the manager. They'll interpret it as an act of compassion.
I don't much care personally about the criticism. Generating discussion is what Advice Line is all about.
My concern is this: Managers and professionals who make use of these polemical techniques on their staff or co-workers will find they damage their credibility and ability to collaborate at least as much as telling them Fred left under his own steam so as to concentrate on pursuing a new career direction.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on November 1, 2007 05:42 AM
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