People management as we all know is one of the most
challenging managerial activities we are confronted with when driving any
business area. Furthermore, if this people are IT professional then the
challenge become even more complex because we have to add technology related
matters on top of the so-called business streams.
IT people are by definition a community using a common
language, having common problems and they share a common success factors. They
have their own career-path within the business organisations as it is not
easier to find IT professionals getting career opportunities outside IT, at least
not at the extend of other business professionals. Even at today’s business,
people don’t look at their IT colleagues as potential candidates for a job
opportunity in a different business area. This becomes even more clear as we go
up in the career-level. There are very few IT professionals that have reached a
senior position outside IT (with the exception of some technology driven
business), hence the need for a CIO with the support of HR to find in a
vertical way the best possible career path for professionals within the IT
family.
To this undeniable situation we have an additional management
complexity when confronted with the need to drive a virtual team. Having a
group of IT professional spread over different geographies, locations, etc. this
requires from any CIO/CTO a master degree
on people management. This is undoubtedly a major challenge we have to deal
with, as people working in such professional environments require special
management attention from their line managers. The use of the current available
communication technologies, like videoconference, instant messaging, email,
etc. are clearly not enough to cover for the virtual community requirements, at
least not at the extend they deserve.
This is something hard to explain and very difficult to implement,
even more in a remote management. IT people as well as any other human been
community, need to realize that they have common needs, similar expectations
and equal opportunities in order to feel that they belong to a group that would
embrace and support their professional challenges. In order to overcome these
difficulties the CIO will need to define a mission statement, a department
logo, an IT strategy and last but not least a career path and related
performance evaluation. All of this would have to be followed by a clear and
consistent communication plan that reaches all and every person of this
community.
The communication has to be managed either remotely and face
to face in order to take the most from the interpersonal characteristics that any
CIO must have developed as a critical competence on today’s management agenda.
Therefore this means that you like it or not traveling is something that you
have to deal on a regular basis when managing a team that is localized across
several locations.
Secondly once you have built the sense of belonging then you
have to start allocating cross responsibilities resulting from the common
agenda. On a nutshell this means that regardless of the location you have to
assign responsibilities on project-A to a person from country-B, and
vice-versa. This with the aim to increase team spirit among the different
locations, but also to break team resistance towards cultural differences.
Clearly not an easy agenda nor something that you can manage
in a short period of time. However it will pay the bill once you have accomplished
and consolidated most of those organizational steps. Regular remote Videoconferences, weekly
phone-conferences, yearly IT events, etc. will be there to further support the
foundations of this virtual IT community.
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