First things First - get your services right

I've been reading quite a bit over the past several weeks - Gary Hamel's book "The Future of Management", the Wall Street Journal, lot of material on the Internet - from newspapers to blogs to various web sites. One thing that I've noticed regarding I.T. and Leadership in general - there is very little said about where to start.

So on the subject of where to start in a new Information Technology leadership position - start with an evaluation of what's working and what is not. In virtually every business that I've been involved with as a consultant or employee - there are basic issues that are creating problems for I.T. and the business. Most of the time they are not the sexy new stuff - they are basic issues that effect reliability, availability and usability.

So my advice - take 30 days to evaluate. Talk to your peers, talk to your end-users, talk to senior leaders. Don't make changes right away - unless something is really broken. Do you have meaningful stats that can tell you how your services are working? Do you have negative feedback on services? Do you have positive feedback?

Each of the situations that I've been in has had at least a couple of areas where IT was not performing to the user community's (or Senior Management's) expectations. A couple of these areas were serious concerns - instability in the infrastructure supporting key services and lack of progress on reports that had been promised.

Resolve these issues quickly earns credibility for IT (and you) but the process isn't necessarily easy. Issues with instability are typically a combination of straight forward solutions (power, network and server redundancy) along with less easily corrected problems (O/S, Database and application configuration). But focusing on these allows the organization to move to work that is more valuable to the business and more rewarding for I.T. staff members. Reducing after hours calls on instability issues also goes a long way to improving moral.

Looking carefully at the organization that you are coming into - while you still have an "outsiders" perspective is also useful. You may see changes that could improve the functioning of your group(s) and increase morale. Changes that you would not necessarily see after being in the organization for a longer period of time. If that view does point to significant changes in personnel - it is good to start planning those early so that they can be executed early allowing you and the organization past those changes quickly and with less disruption than if you wait.