This is something that troubles me. I see examples all over – in my own company and many others – of IT managers not having the bottle to put into practice the policies they know to be best for the company.
Plaintive excuses – “The uses won’t like it”, “We have to do it that way because they insist on using software x in the accounts department”, “but… managers insist on having a printer each”, “I’m lumbered with this system – the directors chose it, I just have to put up with it”, “I told them what the best solution was – but they chose to stick with platform y”.
The list goes on. For crying out loud – who’s in charge? You want responsibility, not a heart attack.
Company bosses get used to having strong sales management, strong engineering or design management, strong financial or strong marketing management depending on what the business is. It’s the strength of these managers and directors that drives the business forward. But where are the strong IT managers?
If you are one of the few, strong, principled IT managers – power to your elbow – but for the rest, maybe we could have some discussion about how to build a career that has a destination and how to make that difference – and some positive examples of how putting your foot down delivers the goods.
You can’t beat being right – and if you do something that in your heart you know is wrong – well, shame on you.
