Managing really clever people

The IT industry is famous for its composition of generally very intelligent people. Even technological scut work is commonly done by people with relatively high intellectual capacity. Now as someone who the words nerd, geek and similar epithets generally apply to, I can tell you that the industry is rife with situations in which a focussed intellect is managed by a more general intellect.

Note that I am not speaking of relative intelligence, merely to the organisation and application of brainpower in the individual. The specialist and the manager are different in this area, because of the nature of their jobs, one who has a highly defined problem domain, and the other who has a less delineated set of problems to solve.

This often leads to situations in which, for lack of a shared problem space, specialists and managers have very different views of the same issues, and a very skewed picture of each other.

Dan Pink (author of Drive and other works) has written extensively about motivation in knowledge work, the solving of nontrivial problems creative work. He hinges motivation on three basic aspects: a purpose, self-direction and the will to make a contribution, and backs it up with a bevy of research data.

The big takeaway here is that you can better manage really clever people by getting out of their way and letting them do really clever things. The organisation is better off contributing purpose and a suitable environment, instead of monitoring and incentivizing the living daylights out of its techies, or trying to maintain a hands-on management style with them.

My own challenge as I become increasingly responsible for fellow problem assassins is to strike the balance between letting them do their tech wizard thing, which they do very well, and making sure that the business environment they operate in keeps running smoothly too. I must be the pilot in uncertain waters and navigate the currents of business interests, budgets, goals and realities. The IT department of many organisations is essentially a black box where the inputs of budget and human resources (hopefully but seldom) result in the output of smoothly running IT assets to support the business. Giving my manager full understanding of what his people are doing is often impossible, as is explaining why the best solution to a given IT problem cannot be implemented because of broader concerns which have no bearing on the problem itself.

The key to this problem is building mutual trust. Every time either the IT department or management has to deny the other what they want it is for a damn good reason. To this end a skilled intermediary who has both deep technical knowledge and insight into managerial concerns is invaluable. This maintains as much freedom on both sides as possible, freedom to act as they see fit and solve problems in the best possible way.

Being in the loop is absolutely essential for such an intermediary. In order to properly represent my people I have to know what they do and how they do it. In order to properly manage my manager I also have to know at least something of his concerns and the broader interplay of forces within and around the business. Only then can I be a functional filter for information in either direction and prevent many issues before they arise. Again the key is trust. Trust in the understanding and discretion of the intermediary which can only develop over time.

The position between technology and business is a tenuous one, and it is quite hard to be Mr. current affairs on both fronts. As I spend more time managing and less time wired this will become harder, as the tech industry moves fast. Until I become such an old fart that I wouldn't recognize a brilliant hack if it bit me, I'll consider it my solemn duty to make life easier for my people and my manager. Wombats, hands-on managers and crawling horrors be warned.