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Monday, August 17, 2009

Who are you protecting?

Ade McCormack, a business associate of mine in the UK, recently wrote the following on his blog IT BEACON which, as you may have guessed, is directed primarily at executives in the Information Technology world. My sense however, is the message conveyed in this article applies equally well to executives, managers and supervisors in virtually all functions and every line of business.

With so many working in and/or creating an atmosphere of uncertainty (if not fear) these days, I thought I'd echo it on as a Wavemaker blog and see if it strikes a nerve and provides some guidance, as it did for me.

Ade's words:

"Who are you protecting? By trying to keep the plates spinning despite the swinging budget cuts, you appear to be protecting your CFO and CEO. Why? Perhaps you are protecting your job? But surely your role is to protect your staff. Protect them from the politics and to defend the IT function from being financially wired for failure. Without this your people will lose faith in you. And the boardroom will not be far behind."

My words (at least I think they're mine):

"If you spend all of your time managing up, don't be surprised when the bottom falls out and you discover those you need the most have deserted you."

If ever you need a consultant to help make sense of your corporate IT challenges, I'd strongly recommend Ade. His contact details can be found at Auridian.com.

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3 comments:

  1. Great advice Jim, thank you for that.

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  2. Thanks for taking the idea forward. And thanks for the recommendation!

    Ade

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  3. Ade/Jim,

    Any chance you could send a copy of this to my boss? On second thought, never mind. If it didn't come from above, he probably wouldn't read it and even if he did, wouldn't recognize that you are actually talking about him!

    ReplyDelete