Looking for I-T People
I am starting to get a little frustrated with something at work. I am seeing staff start to want my technology department to handle their responsibilities only because those responsibilities require the use of technology. It doesn’t seem fair to push the responsibilities on to the tech department because it uses technology to complete the tasks.
Can you imagine what this would look like? The technology department could be in charge of the budget because it is a database. We could also be in charge of evaluating all staff because PDAS is really a technology database as well. Why not have the technology department enter grades since it is an automated gradebook? This way, technology handles the technology side of things and people would not need to use the tools because they don’t need it. This technology fad will go away, right?
But I bet I am not the only one who fights this in their jobs. I don’t think I am the only one who is looking at how what I do impacts the others I work with and the stakeholders we serve. I hope I am not the only one who is looking at how decisions impact everyone and everything for months and years after the choice is made.
As I started this blog to vent about what is happening, I read an article posted on Business Week’s Innovation Column called “Innovation Calls for I-Shaped People” by Bill Buxton.
The second sentence hooked me as this nagging problem started surfacing today:
“If certain problems are beyond the scope of any individual—and most of them are—the way to address them is with a team with complementary skills and a common language in which they can all communicate….There may be no “I” in team, but every team needs to be made up of “I-shaped” people.”
The author recognizes how a friend of his Bill Moggridge, the co-founder of IDEO, came up with the idea of “T-shaped people”. Where the vertical line of the T represents depth and the horizontal line represents breadth. A T-shaped person has a “relatively broad domain of knowledge along with real depth of competence….”
The author adapts the idea of T-shape to the I-shape where there is a firm root in the practical world but then enough to stretch to the clouds to see above. He referenced a teacher who tied this concept to his students by saying “…outstanding students all had an outstanding capacity for abstract thinking, yet they also had a really strong grounding in physical materials and tools.”
So an I-shaped person can extend to the outside and abstract way of thinking but also knows the tools to access to work in the abstract. Mix these I-people with T-people and you can develop some interactions to solve some real problems that combine vision with the tools on hand.
Some days, I feel like I am surrounded by _ people. Underlines. I need some good I&T people and this doesn’t mean Technology staff. I need people who are I’s mixed with my T’s but I feel I am stuck with _’s. A _ person is grounded in what they’ve been doing for years. They are only looking at the grounded part – what is around them. It’s hard to develop vision when your eyes are pressed against the ground. But they sure know the ground and they know it very well! They have a real broad understanding of ground.
I guess I need to change myself before pushing the blame on others. There is a part of me that believes I could do the job better than the _s because I am not a _. But maybe I am a little bit of a _ by thinking it is someone else’s blame. It is a quandry!
I know that I need to figure out who my Is and Ts are in my district and work with them so that we can work together to solve these problems. The blame game doesn’t work and neither does moving the work around.
Even though there is a major part of me that wants to rant, kick, shout, and show how I spent the morning in Google Docs making forms that shorten the workload for that department so that one person could easily make it all work! I want to shake some knowledge into them! You know this feeling, right??
But that isn’t “I” or “T” of me. it makes me a _. Or maybe it is “I” and “T” but adds an “S” and an H” to it. Now “Y” would I want to be that?
Is it Friday yet?
July 21st, 2009 at 11:00 pm
I think you have a good grasp on the realities of being a district admin. However, it does not mean you have to settle for less or just sit an take it. Even though we often get more than our staff can handle, I look at it as an opportunity to maybe do it different. I seem to like to complain about how we beat the dead horse all the time with the same problems and the same solutions that never work. If I can have the freedom to try and fail, then I am OK with the extra duties. You do need to find the I and T people to help. Seems there are many that are just waiting for me to ask. It may take 2-3 people to do the same job.
Do not hesitate to speak up about the demands on your staff. My boss and I really try to write detailed notes for our board reports which are read by the super. I believe this helps plus it is good reflection for me.
Back to your original issue about other staff wanting your department to take over tech stuff….. try to be very vocal in cabinet meetings about what your staff is doing. Most peopel do not know you had 150 work orders this week or 14 training sessions, set up 4 labs, replaced 35 switches, and reloaded all doc servers.
I try to take the same message to every meeting I can and share the great things we are doing.
Probably nothing you already did not know but I do not want you to only blog in your paper journal! Trying to participate. I never contribute to blogs. Maybe this will help be to start.
July 21st, 2009 at 11:58 pm
This is like email for us. We should just use this site to post our conversations! It could be fun.
Good ideas by the way. I haven’t done a good job of self-promotion. Will work on that.
July 26th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I do understand your pain as you described it in your response to the article. We have had to deal with the issues in my district as well. Bill is right that we all need to speak up at Cabinet meetings and any other opportunities you have with the board and other administrators. I put a person in place to support only central office divisions/departments and the school board. I did this because of the demand for support from these areas.
Once the new person was on board, she was bombarded with requests. It is very easy to just take care of the requests for them. However, when this started happening, I had to speak up again. I explained to cabinet members that the role of this person was NOT to take care of those items you do not have the skills to do….the purpose of the person is to assist the staff to develop those skills. We want to build capacity within each of the divisions/departments/school board.
Even with a person handling the many requests, it remains a challenge to all technology divisions.
Just my thoughts