Midwest IT Survival

Get consensus or get lollipopped**?

From solving competing priorities that are affecting your resources to when to ratchet up the risk management opportunities on a high profile project that is approaching a critical deadline, as a MidWest IT manager, you are constantly forced to make decisions.  IT Engineers are also constantly making decisions, but the impact has a slightly more narrow focus where as, an IT Manager’s decisions have a much wider, more macro focus.  Plenty of the IT Manager’s job stress is directly related to having to constantly make decisions that have a macro as opposed to micro impact within the organization.  This article touches on some considerations for IT Managers to judge when one is solely empowered to make a decision compared to when it is more appropriate to solicit feedback from peers and senior management prior to making a decision in an effort to reduce that stress.  Or more simply, as the article is titled, an attempt to help you reach out to your peers, staff and management to answer the question of how much decision latitude does an IT Manager have within their organization?

In the previous article, once you got past the mild disclaimer, the article dove into the first consideration of engaging your manager what will most likely be a series of discussions surrounding the autonomous decision making abilities extended to you and how much your manager is willing to support.  In this article, adding the considerations of engaging your peer managers and your direct reports in extending you decision latitude purview.

Consideration #2 = Peers, what decisions can and can’t you make?

Along the similar thought process of strategically asking your boss for decision latitude parameters, leverage you new job or role assignment to engage with peer managers for their feedback.  Consider the example decision latitude conversation starting questions below:

“Hey Bob, I’m new to Company X as the manager of the FlimFlam engineering team.  I heard you are the manager of the enterprise integration team.  At my last place, I had to get five signatures on a form and a stamp of approval from a review committee in order to get a decision on the name of a software component.  How does decision making for stuff like that happen here from your perspective?”

“Hey Sally, I think we met before.  You are in the customer service department as the shared services manager, right?  I used to be the support manager in the IT employee services department.  Due to the re-org, I am now the manager of the FlimFlam engineering team in the customer delivery department.  Where I came from, I had to get five signatures on a form and a stamp of approval from a review committee in order to get a decision on the name of a server.  How does decision making for stuff like that happen here from your perspective?”

By and large, people enjoy sharing their opinions.  Also, people generally respect and appreciate a well articulated question that appeals to their superior knowledge in their area of expertise.  Thus, another by product is a peer manager you may need to work with heavily in your new role will have a positive initial impression of you.  Additionally, you gain valuable insight into their personality, professional capability and leadership style that could be handy when the future need arises to interact with this individual in a potentially challenging situation.

Can they form a well thought out, intelligent response to your question?  Yes, they maybe worth spending more time with gaining knowledge about your new surroundings.  No, they maybe a low priority time investment going forward.  Do they immediately reveal they have an ego that indicates their cube might not be big enough for both you and their ego to fit comfortably?  Yes, and then file this away for a future encounter where an ego stroking communication style would benefit the next exchange.  Do they appear overwhelmed and oozing stress from every pore in their being?  Yes, then whatever feedback they provide might not be particularly valuable since they could very well be stressed due to ineffective decision making.

The topic of decision latitude is a great excuse to get some valuable interaction and intelligence from your peer managers.  One note, the above question and answer examples are just some thoughts to get your head thinking and not a direct mapping to a finite decision latitude specific determination.  Many other factors could be motivating an individual to respond to your initial queries a certain way such as an out side of work challenging situation.  Thus, the above suggestions are a means to get you thinking about starting dialogs with your peer managers to start to build a decision latitude framework that is ever evolving.

Consideration #3 = Ask your direct reports how decisions were made previously?

In the same thematic vein as interacting with your peer mangers, asking your new direct reports on how decisions were made prior to your arrival is another wealth of decision latitude information with a similar by product: ability to start building trust with team.

A fault of some IT engineers that get promoted into management or sometimes managers in general get a sense that because they are managers, they must make decisions because they are managers.  Be it ego or the power trip that comes with having influence over others, some managers tend to assume they know everything and thus must make all decisions without consulting anyone let alone their direct reports.  Nothing reduces engineering employee engagement and morale more than an engineering team that has a manager that is off making all kinds of crazy decisions without consulting his or her staff.  Time after time I’ve seen these individuals consistently get reorganized from team to team until they eventually get lolipopped** on the organization chart.  Does anyone want to take a guess on who disappears in the next round of staff reductions?

Using this situation to your advantage, a great way to start to establish a rap pour with your new team is to solicit their feedback on how their previous management made critical decisions.  They probably have a laundry list of past examples of good and bad scenarios.  What is the old adage?  Those that don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it from the Spanish philosopher George Santayana.  Your new team probably has some great stories where their previous management went off and made a crazy decision to do something and the corporate drama that ensued.  Take this opportunity to allow them to share the details of decisions gone haywire.  Plus, listen to how each contributes to the discussion.  Who is talking the most?  Who has the most passion in their description of past events?  Who zones out during the discussion and has nothing useful to contribute?  The conversation will give you clues to how your new position fits into the organization’s decision making process.  Additionally, you will be able to gather valuable insight into your new team and what makes up and novitiates each individual.

Wrap up

Finding yourself in a new leadership position within a different department within your current company or starting a brand new job, how an IT manager participates in the decision making process can easily map to a how stressful the job turns out to be.  Running around feeling compelled to make quick, off the cuff decisions in an organization that possesses a culture of methodically researched decisions is one way find your job stress going up.  On the contrary, a culture where an engineering team doesn’t use the restroom without consulting with management is going to take a different approach to go from day one decision making to day X where you ultimately desire the decision latitude to exist within your sphere of influence.  Using the newness of your role presents a great opportunity to consult with your manager, peer managers and you new team members to get some decision making parameters.  Additionally, you’ll have the side benefits of starting a valuable dialog with your new manager around how they expect your role to be successful.  You will also have the ability to get a feel for how your role was or is expected to function within your department’s peer management pool.  Finally, by tapping the past experiences around good and bad decisions that impacted your new direct reports, you will gain valuable insight into what worked and what didn’t work in the past.  You will also begin to establish a rap pour with your new as a manager willing to listen and understand rather than command and control out of the gate.  This process of understanding the decisions latitude at your prevue is on going.  You can expect the minute you get a sense of comfort that you have a good grasp of when you can just decide on the spot rather than form a committee to launch a research team, there will be a re-organization or an acquisition or some other corporate event that will throw the balance out of whack.  Keep expecting the variability to be the normal state and try a more scientific rather than trial and error approach to having a good sense of your decision latitude.

** “Lollipopped” slang for a senior position on an organizational chart that doesn’t have any direct reports when peers at the same level have staff and potentially additional management layers below them.

Do I make the call solo or get consensus first?

From solving competing priorities that are affecting your resources to when to ratchet up the risk management opportunities on a high profile project that is approaching a critical deadline, as a MidWest IT manager, you are constantly forced to make decisions.  IT Engineers are also constantly making decisions, but the impact has a slightly more narrow focus where as, an IT Manager’s decisions have a much wider, more macro focus.  Plenty of the IT Manager’s job stress is directly related to having to constantly make decisions that have a macro as opposed to micro impact within the organization.  This article touches on some considerations for IT Managers to judge when one is solely empowered to make a decision compared to when it is more appropriate to solicit feedback from peers and senior management prior to making a decision in an effort to reduce that stress.  Or more simply, as the article is titled, an attempt to help you reach out to your peers, staff and management to answer the question of how much decision latitude does an IT Manager have within their organization?

[Mild disclaimer ahead]

Now I am not referring to straight forward decisions such as how often to schedule team meetings or how long before email responses would be considered tardy.  I’m referring to decisions that have a lasting or strategic impact.  Examples such as is it the right time to switch resellers or approval to kick off an expansive systems upgrade project or whether your team should provide an additional service that the organization is requesting that has new hardware, additional licensing and staff increase associated costs.  These are stress inducing examples.  Making say, a service extension decision autonomously, could land you in hot water when your boss finds out that, to be successful, you need more money and staff than the budget allows, yet the rest of the organization is moving forward assuming you are providing the new service.  Ever sit in an IT managers meeting with a cross department attendee list to sort out ownership of key services that need to come together to meet a new, high profile business need and watch a manager proverbially step right in front of a speeding bus by agreeing to provide a solution that everyone around the table knows they should have consulted their management prior to agreeing?  This sounds like the start of a series of high stress post meeting discussions.

Lastly, this article isn’t meant to be a step by step guide to stress reduction based on an all encompassing decision making strategy.  This article is more of series of considerations and possible approaches that might suggest a more structured approach to decision making rather than pure trial and error.

[End of mild disclaimer]

In my Internet wanderings, I came across this definition of decision latitude and its link to work stress:

“…the ability to make work-related decisions. When employees can make decisions related to the way they work, they are able to devise coping strategies than can mitigate the effects of stress” (Halpern, D.F., 159). *

Applying this perspective that how a MidWest IT Manager approaches the decision making process directly correlates to the amount of job stress experienced, one could simply extrapolate:

• Effective decision making, less stress
• Ineffective decision making, more stress

Note: I don’t think anyone could make the claim that effective decision making can eliminate all stress.  Rather, effective decision making can only reduce stress given some level of stress is involved in all decision making and as a manger; you are constantly put in a position to make decisions.  Ineffective decisions lead to an increase in problems or issues that force one to have to make even more decisions, thus repeating the cycle and in the process, bumping up the stress level each time.  Thus, if you find your job to be exceedingly stressful, have you stepped back and considered how effectively you are making decisions?

Consideration #1 = Boss, what can and can’t I decide?

The very first consideration is, for your role within your organization, what are you empowered to decide and what requires three committee reviews and seventeen signatures on a company form in order to decide?  Every company culture is different.  Plus, the larger the organization, the more cultural elements of the organization trickle down from division to department to group to team such that a role in one department might have a radically different tolerance for autonomous decision making compared to the same role in another department within the same company.  To make things even more challenging, with every reorganization or incremental leadership change at some higher level within the organization starts an eventual shift in the autonomous versus group decision making abilities.

So, how does one sort all this out within your organization?  Well, if anyone has a silver bullet answer for this one, I would appreciate hearing it.  In my experience, this is an ever evolving process of pro-actively seeking feedback coupled with reflection on the results of decisions made.  The most immediate source of proactive feedback is your direct manager.  If you are new to an organization or you find yourself suddenly reporting to a new manager, you may want to consider putting a high priority on this following example exchange within your first, formal one-on-one discussion:

You to your New Manager: “One topic I would like to cover is how you see this role empowered to make decisions within the purview of the team and the services it provides to the organization versus when I need your or others involvement.  As an example, in my prior role/organization/management relationship/etc., given a situation such as <insert example of recent past where you were completely empowered to make a decision without any additional peripheral involvement>, I was able to make decision X without having to involve anyone else and I knew I would have the support of my management.  In another example, < insert example of recent past where you had to involve your manager, peer managers, senior management, etc. prior to getting a decision made> I needed to directly involve my manager, peer managers and senior management in order to achieve a consensus on a decision.  Can you share your expectations on how much decision latitude you foresee my role having that you would support?  Follow up question, if a needed decision doesn’t fall within the parameters you see for this role, how best should I request your involvement in the decision making process?”

A couple nuances on this example exchange:

• Use of examples

If you asked directly what decisions you can and can’t make, you are likely to get an unhelpful response such as “I would expect you to make the decisions you feel necessary to get the job done” and then leaving your new boss with the impression you are somewhat weak since you had to ask such an open ended question.  By sighting examples on both ends of the decision spectrum and the circumstances that lead up to your autonomous or consensus based decision, you provide your new boss with context as to why you are asking the question.  The context created by the examples allows your new manager to consider your question within the realm of his or her leadership style.  Plus, you will gain valuable insight into your new manager’s priorities and approach to their role.  If your new manager suggests they need to be involved in every decision, you will get a clue they my have micromanagement tendencies or need to reach a level of trust before they are willing to allow you to function somewhat autonomously.  If your new manager suggests they don’t need to be involved at all on anything, you maybe getting clues you are reporting to an “arm chair” or “Monday morning” quarterback manager who will need to be drug into decisions that they would otherwise enjoy you make and then criticize later.

• “Decisions you would support” caveat

The value of adding this to the end of your big question is to get what you really need from your new manager.  Similar to clues you get from the context setting of your examples, what you are really looking for is your new manager to support your decisions not just allow you to make them.  Having this phrase at the end of your question emphasizes this critical component of your question.  You may want to consider the use body language and voice inflection to politely draw attention to these last few words so you ensure you have your managers focus on the words lest they are already formulating an answer based on your lead in statement to the question and examples.

• Follow up question on how best to engage your new boss

Equally critical is establishing some parameters around the best way to engage your new boss when they need to participate in making a decision.  Again, you gain value insight into your new boss’s leadership style based on the answer.  Equally important, as opposed to trial and error, you now have parameters by which you can engage your boss in decision making.  Thus, as a situation pops up that requires you to make a decision, if it in any way meets this parameter, your stress level doesn’t have to rise significantly.  Instead of stressing, start capturing the information needed and approach your boss as they outlined.  Fight the immediate reaction of making a decision on the spot.

• Potentially the greatest value = the exchange itself

Just by having this exchange, you begin the process of establishing a level of trust with your new manager.  They should begin to perceive you as one that values the reporting relationship as well as management pressures that exist at both your and your boss’s level.  They should observe that you value their reputation and role within the organization through establishing these operating parameters.  Just like you don’t appreciate having to navigate around a crazy decision made by one of your team members that puts you and your team in a bad place, your new boss does not look forward to having to respond to crazy decisions you make.

Finally, by having this exchange very early in the new reporting structure, you lay the ground work for on going dialog on the subject of management supported decision making until you reach that level of trust where the parameters and boundaries are firmly established.  Sure, you could learn these parameters and boundaries through trial and error, but why endure the stress and proverbial bruises when asking a strategic set of questions that could avoid the entire steaming pile of cow dung associated with making a call you shouldn’t have made on your own plus have the side benefit of building valuable trust.

In the second part to this topic, look for considerations around how to involve peer managers and direct reports in extending you decision latitude purview.

* Halpern, D.F. (2005). How time-flexible work policies can reduce stress, improve health, and save money. Stress and Health (21), 157-168.