Teamwork makes the dream work
Welcome to my Managing People Site
My Journey into Management
If you want to know why I decided to study computers, check out my About page. It all started by going to community college for computer programming but I then switched to network administration because at the time, being able to support or design computer networks was the highest paying field. I never even got my associates degree because as soon as I passed my network certification exam, I had to find a job asap. Getting a degree was something I always wanted but it wasn’t meant to be. I had to work. I went to school to acquire enough skills to get a job. I had passed my network certification in a system that was no longer even being used. My first job in computers was at a financial company in center city. I was a pity hire. The interview was horrible. I couldn’t answer the most basic network questions. I was sure I would never get that job. I knew I was in over my head and it would be a miracle if they hired me. Fortunately, I knew a couple people who worked there so the manager gave me a shot.
My first job was at an Investment firm in center city. I was hired as a 6 week part time hire out of pity. I was recommended by a good friend of the hiring manager and one other person there so despite my complete failure during the interview, they decided to give me a shot. Basically, I had 6 weeks to prove myself or stop working there. I was hired as a level II desktop support person so basically all support calls went to the help desk first but if the help desk couldn’t resolve it remotely, they would put a ticket in for my team to take. I spent those six weeks taking every ticket that was posted to my team and asked questions constantly. I wanted to learn as much as I could off of the other people who worked there. I was never too proud to crawl under desks, move heavy equipment or anything else that needed to be done. I had little kids to support and I desperately needed this job. Well, after 6 weeks, I was offered full time employment, benefits; the whole shabang. I thought I hit jackpot. After living on food stamps and next to nothing in terms of finances; I finally had a real salary and benefits. I was so proud of my first real insurance card. My supervisor, who was a great guy, gave notice shortly after I started working full time and after about a month or two, he left. I was then promoted to his position.
The first time I was promoted as a supervisor was rough going . This promotion DID NOT go over well with all the guys who had been there longer than me, which was all of them. They went out of their way to make my life a living hell for the first couple months after my promotion. I heard the grumbling that I only got the position because I was a woman etc. What they didn’t notice was the fact that I was handling 3 times more tickets than they were and after running my ass off for months, I had accumulated a lot of knowledge and a really good rapport with the end users and staff at the company. I had people sending messages to my manager about how good I was. I had more kudos from people and I helped more people than any other technician and was willing to take any call no matter how hard or physically demanding it was.
In short, I earned that promotion the old fashioned way; I earned it by running my ass off all day every day. The guys dug their heels in and refused to acknowledge me as supervisor. They wouldn’t take any assignments I gave them and ignored me completely. They were also really lazy and ultimately I had no choice to go to the VP of our department because they would not do anything I asked of them which made supervising them impossible. The VP, whom we all feared, told them they could either respect me an my position or they should look elsewhere for employment. That was a punch in the face for them because they assumed he was on their side. He wasn’t.
I was very lucky because that promotion came with a 6 week management bootcamp. I had to learn about all the different personality types as well as my own. It turned out only 2% of the population had my personality type. Fortunately that 2% also represented most of the CEO’s at the largest companies. The sad part was this was proof that most people did not think like me so I really studied hard to learn about the other personalities and how to motivate them. We met with attorneys who told us what we could and could not say to employees. They gave a lot of very useful information and that course served me for all my years as manager. As much as I wanted to be “one of the gang”; the fact was, it would never be possible. There was a professional distance that I had to keep regardless of what I wanted. It made for a lot of loneliness but it was necessary to maintain my role as manager.
The supervisor I replaced soon reached out to me with an offer to come build my own tech support team for the new .com startup company he went to work for. He knew what a hard worker I was so he gave me rave reviews. It was a lot more money and closer to home. Also, no more city wage tax.
I took the job. I worked there for a few years until they ultimately went out of business. It was the first time in my life I had ever lost a job. I was told when I was hired that I was to manage the one guy they had who was setting up computers for everyone prior to my hire. I was also tasked with creating SOP’s and Metrics(Standard Operating Procedures and Metrics to run the department with)
As a new person, I naturally wanted to improve things as fast as possible. I inadvertently stepped all over the toes of the guy who was there before me. I learned a valuable lesson at that first management position: Take a good look at what is working before you change things. The relationship between Bruce and I became so volatile that I finally sat him down and said “What is your problem?” He responded “You’re an asshole” I said well “I think you’re and asshole too”. He proceeded to tell me I had no right to come along and change the way he was building images for machines before I even knew his process. He was right. I had no business going into a new company and not first learning how they did things before attempting to fix what wasn’t broken. From that point forward; Bruce and I got along great.
I learned a lot during my time at that company. I learned how to screen resumes, interview people in a way that I could extract how much they knew as well as their capacity for dealing with difficult people. I also learned humility and how important it is to admit when you are doing things wrong. Working in Tech Support requires a rare and unique combination of qualities. You have to be technical without being intimidating and you must always put customer service ahead of everything else.
Most tech geeks do not possess both qualities. Some do; but they are not easy to find. Bruce was not a first level guy. I could never put him on the phones because he didn’t have the patience for people who couldn’t follow his instructions. That was fine. I let Bruce do what he was good at and hired others to handle initial phone contact. No one calls tech support because things are going well. They call when they are in a panic because something they need to do cannot be done and they want help ASAP. It is vital to the success of any ‘support’ team to remember that your job is to make your client’s( or end user) job easier. It is just that simple. Get them up and running as quickly as possible and put your ego in your pocket. After about 3 years the company folded and we were all let go.
Fortunately I found a great job working at an Insurance company close to home and even MORE money. In those early days of IT, if you had real management experience, technical knowledge and good customer service skills, you were set. At this next management job, I spent my first week or two primarily observing. I tried to go through their documentation but it was pretty much non existent. There were no processes or procedures documented. It seemed people were invested in keeping themselves around by holding information in their head and not on paper to make themselves invaluable. Sharing knowledge was not a priority which made the entire team ineffective. What I observed was chaos. Everyone was doing everything simultaneously so nothing was being done especially well. People were answering phones while working on hardware problems for others people computers. No one was doing anything particularly well so I decided to note who was best with what my first week. I noticed the people on phones would do much better if not distracted by building computers the whole time they were on the phone.
I was warned when I was hired that nobody had managed this team in a while so it might be a bit disorganized. That was an understatement. The term the end users gave my team was the “Helpless Desk”. I did a quick survey to get some idea of what I was working with and the approval rating was about 39%. Not Good. I soon determined I needed a hardware group and a phone group if I hoped to have any success at all. Kevin was great with hardware but hated answering phones, however my other staff where great on phones if not distracted trying to fix computers simultaneously. I gave Kevin the task of inventorying everything and setting up his own hardware team in the computer storage room where he setup his own little office. Basically, once I got him off the phones and gave him the responsibility of being in charge of all things hardware related, he flourished. He took the ball and ran with it. He took great pride in his new responsibility. The results were amazing. I was also able to get his an 18% increase to bring his salary in line with his responsibility. He had started right after high school so his pay was significantly lower than everyone else’s and I felt he deserved to be compensated for it. The people on the phones were glad to be able to focus on the calls and not be distracted trying to build computers while they were talking to people. Everyone was much happier and people do better when they feel better.
I made sure I had one on one meetings with everyone on my team quarterly. I had a staff of 14 at the time so it was time consuming but I felt it was the only way to stay on top of their performance and their goals. I also started having weekly team meetings where I encouraged people to bring up any problems they were seeing, any suggestions for how we could improve service and we bounced ideas off one another for how to address various issues that were coming up frequently. I valued their opinions and they knew it because I took their suggestions seriously. They were my conduit to the end users that my team was communicating with every day so it was vital that I knew if there were any issues coming up frequently or repetitively. Customer service was first last and most important always. When one of my team had a problem with a particular user, I had them send it to me as I did not want my team taking verbal abuse by anyone.
I took the heat for their mistakes any time my manager, the CIO brought something to my attention. I never blamed anyone on my team when mistakes were made. They needed to know that I had their backs and I did. It turned out that my CIO appreciated this quality in me because he found other managers were quick to blame their staff when things went wrong. He told me this after he chucked a football at my head. Oh…the price of being manager. I was offered a bunch of stock in the company and a much higher salary if I would agree to stay on for five years.
The company valued me and I valued them. I loved working there but after 6 years, I was laid off when they merged with a company in Japan. All of the managers were let go and a good bit of the staff too. I was crushed. I would never have left that company if I had a choice. They were really good to their employees and very appreciative.
Everyone I managed had college degrees. In fact, I was the only one who had no degree and I was the manager. As it turns out, I have found that all the degrees in the world cannot take the place of experience. I was never the type of manager that didn’t jump into the trenches with my team and take any problems they couldn’t handle. I was highly technical and well versed on the software we used. I had friends who were professional students. My one friend swore that once she got the right degree she would make good money. I made twice what she did and it made her crazy. She couldn’t get over it.
College is great if you know what you want to do and concentrate on learning that particular skill. You can get degrees up the wazoo but if you don’t know how to build a good team and properly manage them, you will fail. Degrees do not make great leaders. Humility and understanding how people think and how to motivate them is what makes a good leader. A staff cannot respect a manager who is afraid to roll up their sleeves and jump in the fire with them. They had to know I had their backs. In return, they always had mine.