I began work for a non-profit organization last May as Network Administrator and have come to greatly enjoy the work and environment. I have one problem, however, that seems to cloud my overall job satisfaction.
My boss is the CFO. He has little technical background and virtually no concept of IT support or management. This normally wouldn’t bother me, as I usually am able to work with all kinds of people regardless of their background or technical knowledge. However, in this case it is a problem for two main reasons.
1) My boss makes random and arbitrary decisions about all IT-related issues. One minute he’ll agree with a proposal, the next he’ll forget the reasons behind it and change his mind on the spot. He has made several decisions about who and what to support on an individual basis and doesn’t believe in creating an overall policy for support, but rather deciding when he wants to deal with it.
2) My boss does not allow me to interface with other departments or managers in the agency. His feeling is that ALL IT issues should go through him. But because he rarely responds to requests for support or IT solutions people are reluctant to rely on the MIS department for anything and inevitably do their own thing which usually does not comply with any standard and still is expected to be supported by the MIS staff (basically ME since I’m the only one).
My question is what can I do to change the existing hierarchy, if anything? Ideally I’d like to take on more responsibility as an IT Manager/Technical Lead so that all IT-related issues come to me. I’d like to stay with the agency for several reasons, but cannot figure out how to work in an environment where there is seemingly no rhyme or reason to how things are managed or implemented. Can anyone offer a suggestion or two? Thanks!
