Eleven ways to make your IT career bottleneck-free

The following eleven highly practical measures are enough to help all technical professionals open up new routes in the IT ocean and rush back to the other side full of vitality.

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Stuck in the middle – and feeling down because of it?

Eric Reed is very familiar with the various pitfalls of mid-career. He found that many middle managers in IT companies are too obsessed with the technology they are good at, but fail to truly transform it into a means to achieve effective business goals. Some friends who had the opportunity to become managers do not know how to communicate and collaborate with non-technical people, so they can only be confined to their technical identity and cannot become backup candidates for corporate leaders.

Reed is grateful for his success in overcoming many obstacles in his career and maintaining a strong growth momentum - he is now the CTO of GE Capital. We discussed this topic with Reed and other experienced IT professionals in the hope that the conclusions drawn from this will help you overcome the various difficulties encountered in your technical career. Let's learn about their winning secrets.

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Develop a roadmap

To become a wise technical talent, in addition to setting ideal goals for yourself, you should also find the best way to achieve your goals. Piera Palazzolo, senior vice president of Carnegie Training, specializes in coaching for business improvement. He recommends that everyone start with self-reflection to explore the path that suits them. First, determine the precise job position you want to get, and then ask yourself what career height you ultimately want to achieve. "The next step is to develop a training plan for yourself and evaluate what aspects of your learning you need to strengthen," Palazzolo said. Communicate with your direct supervisor and other managers in the company to see what kind of help they can provide, and at the same time understand what support policies the company provides that are consistent with your own growth trajectory.

Bob Flynn, manager of IT community partnerships at Indiana University, said his institution requires each employee to develop a career management plan that works for him and his colleagues. He said this approach helps him and his colleagues find their ideal goals.

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Finding new perspectives

Managers often pay lip service to the concept of "reaching out," but James Stanger, senior director of product development at CompTIA, an IT industry association, suggests going beyond traditional praise and encouragement by understanding how you present to your direct reports and looking at situations from the perspective of colleagues and customers.

"For middle managers, due to the actual needs of the work and the urgency of completing the task, people often have to start from the established goals and cannot consider other people's positions and ideas too much," Stanger explained. We might as well ask questions like: How do you see this problem? What is your point of view? Can you elaborate on your needs?

"By breaking out of your own fixed way of thinking, you'll find that you have a more flexible perspective," Stanger said, which in turn can make you a better problem solver .

Seize the opportunity to handle leadership matters

To further hone your leadership skills, you need to pay attention to any opportunities that allow you to be valued - especially those involving matters outside your department. "Generally speaking, being willing to participate in cross-functional tasks will help you enter the ranks of senior management earlier. Get out of your own circle and let more people in the company know and remember you," reminds Carly Goldsmith, an expert who specializes in mid-career coaching for employees. She also recommends that you should actively seek out projects and related teams that help you accumulate skills.

One of her clients took Goldsmith’s advice and joined a strategic dialogue program that required deep interactions with senior company leaders. The decision paid off quickly: She was promoted shortly after the program ended.

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Be a perfectionist

It is true that no one is truly perfect, but if you want to take on more responsibilities on the road to growth, you must ensure that the work you are currently doing can achieve the most perfect results possible.

Sean Andersen, director of interactive services at Six Flags Entertainment, works with multiple IT managers in his work at the company's 18 theme parks. He says he finds that employees who "keep their house in order" are better able to consistently deliver on their assigned responsibilities -- including routine and repetitive tasks that often go unnoticed by the average person. Andersen assigns special work to such employees because they are more likely to have the skills to handle the extra responsibilities.

Case in point: When the company first launched a new pilot program on Chrombox two years ago, he handed the task off to a technical manager who could keep everything under control.

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Keep learning and be willing to share your findings

In order to ensure that you can move into management and move beyond the role of a technician, you need to constantly update and build your comprehensive skill set to prevent the devastating effects of technological obsolescence. "The best approach is to keep learning," said CompTIA's Stanger. Taking more training courses, obtaining new certifications and obtaining additional college degrees are all good ways, he said.

If you're like most employees and you're already overwhelmed with your daily work, there's nothing you can do but find ways to squeeze in a few hours of learning. Andersen, one of Six Flags' top executives, says he tries to carve out time, often late at night, to read technical literature and take personal proficiency tests. He adds that he assigns extra tasks to subordinates who do the same.

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Eliminate your blind spots

Reed, CTO of GE Capital, admits that he often didn’t realize how his decisions would have a significant impact on other employees. “I would sign off on work goals and create a plan for execution, but I wouldn’t look at it from the perspective of how it would affect the team,” he said. He didn’t realize how his decisions would cause problems until someone on the team reminded him of it.

Reed noted that while his rash decision-making style didn’t ruin his career, it did hurt some of his business partners. Now he’s starting to pay attention to his blind spots and trying to catch them before they have a real impact on his team.

Bernadette Rasmussen, CTO and senior vice president of information management at Health Care Service Company (HCSC), agrees with Reed’s approach. “Listen to your team members, get their perspectives, and understand the perspectives of your business leaders,” she advises.

Find out how your business makes money...

You can never have too much widely applicable business wisdom. This is also the general requirement of the current talent market for technicians.

In order to successfully ascend to a leadership position, everyone needs to understand how their company operates and, more importantly, how to make money. "Some people have entered the ranks of middle management, but have never thought clearly about these two issues. They don't know that an excellent technology system alone cannot achieve the healthy operation of a company. On the contrary, the existence of the technology team is to help the company better achieve revenue generation," Reed emphasized.

He recommends spending time with business colleagues to build a sound understanding of business operations and use that knowledge to make smarter decisions within IT. Knowing which technology solutions will make the most significant financial difference to the business can really help prioritize projects and make us the technical heroes within the company, Reed said.

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…and then leverage that expertise to achieve your business goals

As an IT mid-level manager, you must of course put technology reserves first and continue to deliver technology projects with real value. As an aspiring senior manager, our primary goal is to ensure that these technology projects can bring real economic benefits to the company. In other words, you need to provide a reliable return on investment.

“You have to change your perspective from being a technical expert to a leader who helps the business realize operational benefits,” said HCSC’s Rasmussen. “Connect the dots and look at everything from a more core business perspective and bring your unique value to the table,” she advised.

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Act as the professional people expect

We can’t just be content to be “some” technical expert sitting in a corner of the office - instead, we need to be “that” expert.

Theresa Caragol learned the importance of this when she climbed the career ladder. “You have to hone your skills as much as possible and have a deep knowledge base so that leaders in the company will come to the conclusion that, ‘If I want to know about this, I have to talk to that person.’ And if you can be an expert in multiple technical areas instead of just one, that’s even better,” she said.

Caragol, currently serving as Global Vice President of Sales Channels and Partners at Extreme Networks, was recognized by her previous employer as an irreplaceable expert in software-defined networking. Her direct manager helped her get opportunities to speak on the topic, and she was able to gain the attention of senior leaders and successfully get promoted. She worked her way to Vice President of Global Sales Channels, Alliances and Partners at Ciena, her previous employer, which in turn became an important stepping stone to her current success.

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Handle the relationship between superiors and subordinates well

If you want to really shine, you must ensure that your team is equally outstanding. In addition, you must also make your superiors have good performance through your own efforts. After all, in most cases, our responsibilities and promotion opportunities are in the hands of our immediate bosses. You should communicate with your leaders regularly, and you can take this opportunity to talk about the company's development goals, personal career goals, and even topics related to your own interests, suggests Palazzolo of Carnegie Training.

At the same time, build a good collaborative relationship with your team with the same positive attitude, because only when they have good work performance can everyone's own abilities be effectively proved. Vidhya Ranganathan, senior vice president of product and engineering technology at cloud service company Accellion, builds such a good relationship between superiors and subordinates through a common sense approach. She regularly has lunch or coffee with her team and communicates. "This is not a formal coaching or lecture to them. The purpose of such activities is to make employees feel that I exist and value their opinions," she said.

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Avoid mistakes

Make as few mistakes as possible on your way to promotion:

Don’t wait for your boss to offer you opportunities to shine. That’s why Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been the subject of a wave of criticism lately. In fact, he made a mistake that every employee should learn from—he urged women to have “confidence in the system” instead of asking what they need. “Too often, mid-level managers react to their careers in a reactive way”—including reacting to pay raises and promotions, Goldsmith, a career coaching expert, notes. “The right way to deal with it is to go out and proactively look for opportunities.”

Don’t stick with a job you don’t like or aren’t a good fit for. “If we don’t have the initiative, we become more stressed, more likely to make mistakes, and whether we realize it or not, we tend to be seen as bad employees,” Goldsmith explains.

Don’t get distracted by the details. According to Goldsmith, middle managers often get involved in details that they shouldn’t have to worry about. Remember, you need to guide your team from a macro perspective, not sit next to them and write code together.

Original link: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2692426/11-ways-to-re-energize-your-it-career.html