The Trust Factor

As I spend more and more time and effort promoting the implementation of best practices, it emerges, more and more that the first and most important step is trust. Trust in the person giving advice and recommendation, trust in the process methodologies and finally trust in themselves: that they can implement the best practices successfully.

Usually all three areas of trust are missing. This then requires the process of gaining trust from people and the organization. However, trust is something that has to be earned and typically earned over time. Consistent reliable, dependable performance over time is usually what builds trust. This can be done to achieve the trust required but can an organization afford the time required for this trust to fall in place? The time involved could easily be months, perhaps years. By this time, the competition could have implemented these strategies and best practices and moved far ahead in the race.

Therefore, it is necessary that organizations and people quickly gain trust in what is best for them. This, however, is something they must decide. And there we have the Catch-22. How do they decide what is right for them when they don’t trust it? The only way out of this quandary is awareness and education. Become more aware of the best practices out there and the ability to make the right choices will get a lot easier.

The conclusion is that a higher degree of awareness and knowledge is needed to have the right level of trust for the right technique. Those who do not improve continuously will pay the price for their lackadaisical attitude.

Sifting Through the Avalanche

With the topic of age and leadership analyzed to death in the last couple of weeks, an issue that came up repeatedly was is there really a necessity for constant learning by everyone. The challenging thing about this issue is that there is a huge volume of information and change coming at us all at the speed of light. So how do we sift through this vast amount of information in a way that most benefits us? Clearly, we cannot ignore all this information and do nothing. And yet it is humanely impossible for one person to learn everything. So what is the answer?

The most obvious starting point would be to specialize in one’s area of expertise. This means that a Project Manager should pay special attention to the changes in tools, techniques and methodologies that are occurring in the area of project management and to ensure that they learnt what was important and relevant to them. However, staying current in one’s area of specialization is the bare minimum required nowadays.

It is at this point that the IT professional must choose where they wish to move towards in terms of their career and longer term goals and keep current with that. Also, one area that most IT professionals would do well to master is the use of proper terminology and an awareness of what the industry standard is even if it is not utilized at their place of work. A higher level learning of overall management techniques such as ITIL and CMMI may also be a good idea, irrespective of specialization.

Over and above this, folks will want to keep up with the culture of the times which is changing all the time as well. It was not very long ago that Facebook, Twitter and MySpace were pretty much unheard of. Now Facebook has overtaken Google for the number of hits worldwide. Clearly this is something both individuals and organizations must keep abreast of now.

It’s getting to be so that constant learning is now a mandatory part of our lives. It’s a question of how smart we can be about it. Like anything else it’s going to be a challenge of getting the most bang for the buck, or in this case, time.

Age and Leadership 2 – Stayin’ Hip

Last week’s post on age and leadership sparked some lively debate on various discussion boards. The range of issues brought forward by various people and their points of view resulted in a continuation of the topic with this week’s post. Many thanks to the people who posted their point of view and sparked debate and discussion. After all that is what a blog is all about.

Let us start at the beginning. As IT projects usually start with requirements definition, let us also start with the requirements necessary for leadership positions. After all how can we discuss the effect that age has on leadership abilities when the leadership abilities themselves are undefined? Some of the criteria for effective leadership are:

• Communication skills



• Problem solving skills



• Adaptability to change



• Time management



• Stress management



• Interpersonal relations and teamwork



• Ability to set goals and articulate a vision



• Managing conflict

This is, of course, not a comprehensive list, but it does cover most of the criteria. The interesting thing about this list is that it has been true and relatively unchanged for millennia. So how does the current age of information and technology affect these criteria? How are these issues affected by the fact that we are in the year 2010?

Adaptability to change has never been as important and that too, at all levels. Market changes, customer preference changes, technology changes, methodology changes, tools and technique changes are all occurring at incredible speed. Of course not all changes are necessary or even good. However, the ability to make the decision on which change to implement is necessary and this can only be achieved by being very well informed and in touch with what is current.

Furthermore, all the other criteria now require knowledge of the latest tools and techniques to accomplish effectively. Time management is not possible without the latest handheld device and mail, VoIP and other technologies today.

For true leadership, the ability to read the future, i.e. the visionary capability, is impossible without a thorough understanding of the market and the culture of the times, which is vastly different from just 10 years ago. I, myself, have to keep going to urbandictionary.com to lookup words that did not exist a few years ago.

So what emerges is that a great deal of extra effort is required by all professionals nowadays and senior management in particular to keep up with all that is necessary to perform their duties effectively. What steps could be taken to achieve these leadership abilities relevant to our times? Some effective steps that can be undertaken are:

• Constant learning (or at the least, awareness) of new technology and methodologies



• Regular association with younger people and observance of their activities



• Staying current of the "lingo" used nowadays (which is a job in and of itself)



• Being open to change and constantly adapting to the new changes in technology AND culture.

In my opinion, the professional who performs these steps will be useful irrespective of age. Even an 18 year old who fails to perform these steps will be obsolete. Perhaps the moral of the story is that we must remain in a state of constant learning more than ever before.