An honest performance appraisal will keep things on track.
Review Your Tech Team
An honest performance appraisal will keep things on track.
- By Greg Neilson
- October 01, 2000
Rather than having Greg and Steve answer one of your
questions this month, we invited them to choose a key
career topic that they haven’t been asked yet in this
column, but that they’ve been burning to talk about.—Ed.
Greg Neilson says: First,
I want to tell you about a situation that I hope will
illustrate that technical skills alone have a relative
importance on the job. A couple of years ago, I had a
leadership role in a team that managed the LAN environment
for the whole company. This included a central administration
team and onsite staff in cities across the country.
Many members of the team were re-deployed from other
areas of the company and had to learn everything from
the ground up. But one member stood out from the others.
A former marketing person now in a technical role, he
never seemed to understand many technical concepts. What
he did learn took ages to sink in. Technically, he was
a long way behind everyone; I doubted whether he’d ever
catch up.
Yet he would work long and hard to keep the users at
his site happy and often relied on his technical contacts
throughout the company to get him through. From his marketing
background, he really knew how to cultivate useful contacts
throughout the company. That’s in distinct contrast to
most technical people I know who often like to keep to
themselves. The people at his site absolutely loved him,
yet because of his lack of technical knowledge, I wanted
to have him removed. My manager at the time disagreed
furiously with my assessment. As long as the customers
were delighted (and they were), she didn’t care how he
did his job.
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It took me a number of years to be able to look back
at this situation and realize that my manager was right
all along. The key was what this team member was able
to do, not how he did it. If he could use his contacts
rather than his technical abilities to get the job done,
so be it. The bottom line usually isn’t how someone works,
but what he or she produces.
Another lesson: A few years ago, I was team-leading a
group of contract developers. I had high hopes for one
of the programmers; since he had more experience than
the others, I was paying him more. But after two days,
it became evident that he didn’t work as quickly as the
rest of the team. I felt obliged to call him in and tell
him that I’d have to end the contract unless his productivity
improved. He made a concerted effort but never reached
the productivity level of the rest of the team.
Shortly after that, he began to prove his value. We had
a data corruption problem in our system that no one was
able to solve. This consultant had the patience to sit
down and methodically determine the source of the problem
(another system) and the mistake that had caused it. From
then on, I assigned him to all of the difficult problems
that no one else could get to the bottom of; as you can
guess, he did well in this role.
From that experience I learned to be careful in comparing
developers (or anyone, really) strictly on the basis of
productivity. Some people naturally want to get a job
done as quickly as possible; others want to take a considered
and methodical approach. Just because someone’s approach
doesn’t match yours, don’t jump to conclusions.
About the Author
Greg Neilson, MCSE+Internet, MCNE, PCLP, is a Contributing Editor for MCP Magazine and a Professional Development Manager for a large IT services firm in Australia. He’s the author of Lotus Domino Administration in a Nutshell (O’Reilly and Associates, ISBN 1565927176).