6. Communicating and listening; gathering information
Be mediocre at everything else but be perfect at this: communication. It's one of the two key competencies everyone must have, and it's especially important for IT pros. Good communication is bidirectional, giving as much as receiving. This is a wonderful place to indulge your generous spirit, because there's no such thing as too much communication.
No matter what you think you do for a living, every IT professional is actually a consultant. As a consultant you have a responsibility to your customer to provide maximum value. Doing so means you know your customers' business at least as well as they do, and that means listening. Your customers are entitled to know what they're getting for the money they're paying you, and that means you must proactively and regularly let them know what you're up to on their behalf.
This is a hard one for your typical IT professional. Most of us went into this field in part because we related more to code and wires than we did to people. And most of us, by and large, are accommodating folks. We hate to say no, and we hate to deliver bad news. Better to just sit at our desks with our heads down and do our jobs. These are all fatal mistakes, and although it's far from easy and may be run counter to your personality, you have no choice but to develop these skills. Here's the good news: Anyone can learn how, and it gets easier with time and practice.
7. Focusing on results
The other absolutely critical competency is the ability to execute. Plans are great, but talk is cheap. At the end of the day, you have to have something to show for your efforts. A good way to start is by knowing some key facts about your customer, like who are they and what do they want? As an IT professional operating consultatively, you have a responsibility to advise your customer, based on your knowledge and experience. But don't forget that ultimately it's up to your customer -- your boss, your co-worker, your team leader, whoever is the ultimate consumer of your efforts -- to make the decisions, and sometimes those decisions are not what you recommend. Check your ego at the door and do what's necessary to achieve the agreed-upon results. Don't let analysis paralysis slow you down and don't indulge yourself in a quixotic crusade to achieve some random level of perfection. The 80-20 rule is in force: 80 percent of the result can be achieved through 20 percent of the effort, and the incremental value beyond that level is frequently not worth the cost.
8. Thinking strategically
It's an increasingly competitive world, and today's IT professionals must prove, every day, that they can add tactical and strategic value and that they belong and are welcome at any meeting taking place anywhere in their organisations. Over the course of the last 10 or so years, businesses have started to recognise the strategic importance of IT and to see that IT is not just a backwater stepchild of the accounting department but adds value throughout the organisation. IT professionals are service providers, and we must think of ourselves as such.
Get intimate with your company's business and strategic plans and constantly strive to come up with ways of supporting and furthering those plans. Your company has no such plans? Devise one for technology. Your department, at least, will be operating strategically and you may be able to use that as a springboard to provide thought leadership to management in expanding the plan to cover the whole business.
Most IT departments are reactive, waiting for their business customers to bring them ideas for new systems. High functioning, highly successful IT departments are proactive, working consultatively and collaboratively with their business customers in pursuit of overall corporate goals and objectives.
9: Influencing and persuading
The military style hierarchial chain-of-command organisational model of the 1950s has given way to flatter, more horizontal structures. I know, we all still have bosses, and bosses still have direct reports. However, the person who does your performance review may not be the one giving out your work assignments. Throw into the mix some geographical dispersion, add a dash of decentralisation and a pinch of autonomous work groups, and you've got quite a stew.
Direct management has been supplanted by influence management. We no longer order people to do things, we sell them on it. We convince them. We negotiate, cajole, and urge. Remember communication? Here's a great place to exercise all those wonderful communication muscles you've been developing. This is a capstone competency, in that it brings to bear other skills, including strategic thinking and results orientation. IT professionals adept at influencing others almost always stand out as effective, competent, well regarded producers. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is a competence for managers only. Influence and persuasion are among the key skills that drive collaborative work environments.
10: Being adaptable
Gone forever are the days when being a technology professional meant having expertise in a particular development environment or being able to build and support a network. Don't get me wrong, you can still make a good living doing just those things, and you're every bit as professional as anyone else who gets paid to provide an IT service. But to become a truly well-rounded IT professional, you need to work constantly on expanding and honing your skills.
Some competencies, such as technical skills and knowledge, are relatively easy to acquire. Others, such as business knowledge, take more time. Management of individuals and teams, leadership, and the ability to work collaboratively with colleagues and customers require behavioural competencies based on personal attitudes and characteristics.
If you chose a career in IT, you also chose, by definition, to be an agent of change. Our profession changes swiftly and profoundly, and we have to take seriously our responsibility to change along with it. Our businesses change, like it or not. Competitive pressures, new industry entrants, management turnover, strategic shifts, product development, and any number of other factors cause change. There's almost no area in any organisation that isn't touched by technology, and as responsible professionals, we must help by leading our organisations in adapting to that change.
Jeff Relkin has 30+ years of technology-based experience at several Fortune 500 corporations as a developer, consultant, and manager. He has also been an adjunct professor in the master's program at Manhattanville College. At present, he's the CIO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a federal government agency located in Washington, DC. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of MCC or the United States of America.
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