Oftentimes we assume technology team leaders understand their space so they must understand how the technology they support impacts the business. The challenge is, these same people can be brilliant application leaders, infrastructure gurus, and project managers but they can have a very siloed view of the organization. This view can limit their ability to make a difference as they move up the organization and to withstand change.
Who are the “technology middle managers”?
According to Harvard Business Review’s Zahira Jaser, middle managers are “connecting leaders”. “...a manager in the middle of hierarchical layers builds relationships with those at the top (from a position of followership and lower power) and with the people at the bottom (from a position of leadership and higher power).”
In technology teams, we see these critical team members in positions such as:
Supervisor Technical Support
Manager DevOps
Director Programming
AVP PMO
It really depends on the size and shape of the organization. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, not in the C-suite or on the Executive team. We work to translate the vision of those at the very top to those on the front line.
Why should they learn about the business?
What makes a technical team successful often is a combination of
anticipating business customer needs,
ensuring existing systems are highly reliable and secure,
ensuring our own team grows and is fulfilled, and
that we are fiscally responsible while doing all the above.
This is the normal balanced scorecard basics.
The challenge is when we take an extremely talented technical person, promote them and they do not understand the true business value of the technology services they are providing. Often these people are high performers and great individual customer pleasers. They do not understand the overarching business processes and how technology supports and breaks these processes. So instead of working to ensure critical business processes are highly available or optimized, they continue working to do what the squeaky wheel individual customer wants. This “individual over the organization good” hurts them as a leader.
Who should teach them about the business?
Ideally, when a technical person is promoted or hired into an organization, their direct leader would provide at least 90 days of structured training paired with organization level training. This would then move into on-going mentoring over the rest of their first year.
Leaders need to acknowledge the differences in moving from Supervisor to Manager, Manager to Director, etc. The scope of accountability increases and how deeply the person needs to know various areas of the business changes.
This acknowledgement often does not happen though. We promote from within and provide little to no formal training or mentorship.
If you are a technology middle manager, how might you learn on your own?
We need to acknowledge that most leaders and organizations do not have detailed, well-rounded on-boarding and promotion programs which support the technical leader. If there are programs, they are broad-brush programs to help us lead teams, handle conflict, and more. These are great educational activities; they just do not close the gap most technical leaders need.
A technical middle manager can ask for an internal mentor to guide them through processes such as projects, facilities, financial and more. There are many public documents on external and internal sites which can be reviewed such as financial statements, organizational charts, recordings of recent company level meetings, and donor/investor brochures. From these, discussions with your leader can be had. Most leaders are happy to chat about the business of the company once asked. They just do not realize the person will be interested or how it connects to their work.
No time like the present
Take control now no matter how long you have been in your position or how long your technical middle manager has reported to you. If the cost per touch (Service Desk, etc) is part of your accountability, wouldn’t it be wise to know the financials of your organization to know how where you are at is it compares to the business’ current financials? What about the plans for growth and expansion of the organization and if this impacts your need for FTEs? Start now. You will connect even more deeply with the mission and work your organization does and help your team see how truly valuable they are.
Best wishes to you! Please connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know what you learn. I love to hear about how people are growing in their technical leadership journey.
Comments