One of the sad realities that I witness almost every day is when genuinely good IT people are overlooked by inexperienced management or human resources teams. Or, these existing good people find themselves being shown the door due to their manager’s inability to work with technologically-minded people. This happens extensively in the realm of growth companies and even in some start-ups. The push to become big and behave as a bureaucracy sometimes becomes incorrectly perceived as tantamount to success.

One industry pundit coined the term bozo explosion back in 2006. I’ve spoken about this concept with everybody ranging from HR professionals to CEOs, and their reaction is almost universally the same: “So that’s what that is called!” This is immediately followed by grins and chuckles with nods of agreement.

Everybody knows about this behavior and everybody can see how destructive it can be, but so many companies execute the same mistakes. When confronted, otherwise sensible people in management will issue any number of explanations as to why this doesn’t apply to them or that their situation is different. Well, here’s some free advice: it isn’t.

Here are a two excellent examples from the link above of early warning signs that trouble might be brewing on a company’s horizon:

• Your HR department requires an MBA degree for any position; it also requires five to ten years work experience in an industry that is only four years old. The goal of hiring is building a team of great employees. One proxy for a great employee is a relevant educational or work background. However, the perceived “right” educational background and work experience are not sufficient conditions for excellence. Hiring a bozo with the “right” resume can drag down other employees and increase the probability of hiring more bozos. Not hiring a great person because she lacks the “right” resume is not as harmful but is a mistake too.

The number of times I’ve seen this is simply staggering. I keep an eye on industry and this is one alarming trend that shows no hope of slowing down. I’ve seen job listings for entry-level IT personnel that require an MBA and Cisco certifications for job responsibilities border on help-desk. Take a look at any number of Midwest job listing sites (CareerLink has been a popular destination) and you’ll see example after example.

Additionally, I’ve seen some ludicrous requirements for other positions. One company has had the same position listed for over a year. Through circles, it turns out that management is determined on having someone who is “PCI certified” for their Director of IT position. They reject anybody who is not, regardless of their performance history. This makes it crystal clear that whomever is doing the hiring doesn’t have any idea what they are hiring. The PCI Data Security Standard is a list of compliance guidelines that are enforced by the Payment Card Industry (Visa, Mastercard, et cetera). If you are going to perform credit card transactions, your company needs to follow the PCI DSS guidelines. There is no “certification” or process for an individual or corporation to become “certified”. (For a primer on the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, check out their website.)

A company looking for the best talent needs to present themselves more effectively, or else they are going to get second- or third-tier candidates. Nobody who knows about the PCI DSS and can speak about it in proper context is going to want to work for a CIO who has no idea why it’s important to their business.

In other words, don’t shun the wheat and cater to the chaff. Most dedicated people don’t have certifications because they’ve been too busy being successful and bringing value to their employers.

This harks to several of Bradman Group’s tenants of successful IT management: Know your needs. Know the solutions. Know their value.

• Insist that managers hire better than themselves. For example, an engineering manager should hire a programmer who is a better programmer than she is, not worse.

This is another area that I’ve seen many companies fail miserably at. It’s incredibly important, especially as it relates to IT, to avoid creating failure from the start, or to recognize impending failure and become proactive at addressing it.

For example, and I witnessed this first-hand, one company I am familiar with had a President who terminated their Vice President of Sales. The reason for the termination was presented to employees in a typical fashion: “In order for us to grow we need to make certain changes.” Considering this VP of Sales had managed to move the company from a zero-dollar company to a six million dollar company in less than two years, it struck the entire organization as downright bizarre. According to insiders, the reality is that this was done because the President of said company was irritated by the fact that the VP was earning a higher paycheck than they were due to commissions. Absurdity has no prerequisites.

The correct course of action would have been to encourage that individual and give them the resources they needed to take the company to twelve million dollars, to thirty, to one hundred, etc.

As a leader of a company, especially start-up or growth companies, your number one mission is to bring value to your investors and/or shareholders. You’re goal shouldn’t be to worry about who in your arsenal of talent is making more money than you are. That’s inexperience.

I’ve seen the same thing happen in technology departments with IT Directors who believe that their ability to operate an iPod better equipped them to make infrastructure decisions. If you disagreed with their choices, you would be eliminated. Or you’d become part of the “team” of IT pariahs. Needless to say, these teams rarely perform and frequently act as functional impediments. However, when your company is in the midst of a bozo explosion, this behavior is commonplace.

In summary, your company is started by an A-level person. That A-level person may, after a certain threshold of success is achieved, begin to replace their A-level hires with B-levels. As the company grows, the B-level personnel hire C-levels, who in turn hire D-levels, and so on. Ultimately you’re left with a company with many fragmented and dysfunctional silos full of personnel who act solely as functional cogs. Once one cog departs, every branch that touches them is effected and work stops or slows. The entire organization suffers.

Again: Know your needs. Know the solutions. Know their value.

Bradman Group exists to help companies avoid these costly mistakes. We have the expertise to analyze existing problems, correct them, and help built cogent strategies and frameworks to keep IT on the right-track for your company so that it can achieve the maximum level of value potential.

Please contact us for a thoroughly non-sales discussion. Brainstorming is always free!

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Tags: three knows, value potential, Virtual CIO, Virtual CIO

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 9:07 am and is filed under Executive Briefs, Management, Virtual CIO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.