IT managers

Management Information Systems, Skills needed by IT Managers

What is the difference between Management Information Systems (MIS) and Computer Information Systems (CIS)? MIS is a business major based on IT curriculum deigned to equip students with the latest skills in programming and networking coupled with business skills to manage modern work place.

CIS is 100% technical; it’s designed to give students the necessary programming, networking, hardware designing and troubleshooting skills.

Most CIS graduates spend their careers working on technical fields and never advanced to management positions, while most MIS graduates move quickly to management positions.

In general, MIS majors start with a higher salary than CIS majors and that because of the lack of management training for CIS majors.

In today’s corporate environment, IT managers must have the necessary management skills to run their department; MIS is the way to go for those who want to make it to the leadership positions in IT industry.

Management with cultural barriers

Working with a group of people with diverse cultural backgrounds is both exiting and challenging. In my job as manager with international company, I interact and manage people from different parts of the world and each group of people from specific geographical region has their own unique characters that a manger must be aware of.

There are People who are reluctant to accept leadership positions, they brought up in societies where they always told what to do and not use their own judgments, with this group, I have to always monitor them closely and give them clear guidance on what is expected of them. The good thing about this group is that they listen and follow instructions.

There are People who seek leadership positions and willing to make judgments and take risks, with this group a manager has to be a bit careful, since he may end up with people in leadership positions without adequate experience, this group of people can be trained gradually to assume higher positions plus the manager can use them as to fill in on his absence since they require little supervision. These groups of people come from societies where men usually have to assume leadership positions and it expected of them to rise quickly in the corporate ladder.

The last group is of people is those who want to only excel in what they do, they are experts in their professions and willing to learn and advance as long as they remain focused on what they can do best. These groups of people come from societies where “excellent work and professionalism” is expected from every member of the society, they trained to excel in certain fields and remain focused on what they do best.

Of course this is my personal experience and it applies to this part of the world, the Arab world.

Change in Management must be done carefully

Every time there is a presidential election somewhere, we hear contestants call for change, they talk about the change they will bring to the government once they are elected, but change doesn’t happen overnight, it takes years of planning.

We may have read stories about how new management in some large organizations such as (GM, Chrysler, and Nissan), brought sweeping changes to management style and created success in short years, but these are only few success stories otherwise change takes time and years of planning.

In a small business world where I work, making changes is not that difficult since there are only few people are affected, but convincing people to accept the change and embrace is not always easy.

Also changes must be classified into categories, for example, changes in working conditions and better work environment can take place immediately where changes in business process or employee-management interactions must happen gradually over time.

In my current work environment in the Arab world, I came from American education and work background, it is hard and tedious process to convince upper management of the needed change in the organization, in addition, the society is still not ready to accept many changes in the work place.

Change is inevitable and it is part of life and those who try to stop it will be overwhelmed, but change must be managed and steered carefully to get the desired results.

How long an employer must keep your records?

Few days ago, I have contacted few previous employers for reference letters; I needed them as a record of my whereabouts for the last 10 years.

One employer said “they don’t have any records of my employment with them and wanted me to send them pay-stubs as to show my employment period with them and any benefits that I may have received.” I found that to be really odd and I felt strongly against sending them anything.

I was under the impression that companies must keep records of their employees for a period of 10 years or so.

I am not sure what the labor law in the US says about this, but any feedback on this matter would be appreciated.

Thanks

The CEO who refuses to go on-line

Ever seen those TV ads where they show the CEO of the company struggling with his IPOD or his Internet? In these TV ads they usually show a middle age CEO struggling with Technology and is usually rescued by young techi.

At my current job, I am struggling with a CEO who refuses to do things online, it took my a great deal of office politics to convince him to have a domain name registered under our company name. His idea of online collaboration is to have all e-mails sent to our company read by everyone, please don’t laugh.

I am still trying to convince him to pay all his bills and companies bills online.

Can we survive without e-mails even for one day?

I am sure the answer will be “NO”, e-mails became the most vital and important communications mean for the modern organizations.

What brought this subject up is the current economic crisis in the US and the rest of the world. Many fear for their jobs, we still don’t know how things will turn out but for many there will be jobs cut.

IT and the other related services are not the property of the elite anymore; many IT services became integral part of the modern work place, IT services are must for the business world today.

I believe that the current financial crisis will not, significantly, affect IT services. Simple e-mail down for one day my halt the operation for many companies, so just think what would happen if some other IT services went down.

What I am trying to say is “IT is not a thing to have, its a MUST have and the world will need IT services regardless of the financial situation.”

A CV or A Resume

What format should a job seeker use? In North America, the resume is the common format job seeker use to tell about their job experience and education. The Resume usually dose not includes so much personal information as the CV does.

Being in India and in the Arab world for the last few months, I have seen many CVs per my job as development manager. What I really didn’t like about the CV format is the personal bio data, most of the CVs that I have read contain so much personal information, in one CV, the applicant included the name of her mother and father and their occupations in the CV and its not unusual to see the applicant passport number listed in the CV too.

I have always wondered as a manager, why do I need to know this much personal details of the applicant, my major concern is the applicant actual experience.

One of my employees asked me to review her CV, there was almost half page of information about her bio, so I told her, any busy manager will not be interested in your bio, he wants to know more about your job experience and if he needed more bio information, he will ask for it.

I don’t know if it’s a cultural issue or not, but mostly in the US, its almost illegal to ask so much bio data of your employees, but in this part of the world, privacy is still not a big issue.

Finish what you have started

What is the distinguishing character of the most successful people? They finish what they have started.

Good business plans are only good if they are fully implemented. Many businesses started with great ideas only to see these businesses fail, they had a plan, they started to work on the plan, but they didn’t follow through.

When the management fails to emphasize the importance of following through, employees will not follow through on their job performance.

In the past few months, I had several incidents where I didn’t get excellent customer service support. In one of my international flights with a world class airlines, I had to change my destination after I checked in my luggage, only to find out later that my bags didn’t not arrive with me on the same flight. I have talked to the airlines customer agent and explained to him in full details about my intentions to change my flight routes and he re-assured me over and over that my checked in luggage will be with me on the same flight, but later on I found out that this agent didn’t not do his job thoroughly and he didn’t not rely the message to the ramp agent to pull the luggage from one flight and load into another.

In another incident, I had a tech support issue so I called the tech support line, only to talk with half trained technicians who kept giving me different answers for the same issue, a very simple problem that kept going on week after week which eventually took less than one minute to fix.

If these customer support representatives were told in their training that once they take an ownership of an issue, they must follow it through until it has been resolved, they would have paid better attention to the customer who is waiting on the other side of the line and they could have save their companies time and money.

Finish what you have started and follow through with your commitments and you will see how success will follow.

Do you turn off your computer at night?

As in IT consultant, I am sure you were asked this question many times “Should I turn my computer off at night or when I am not suing it or should I leave it on?”

I think the world is divided on this issue, some tech would tell you to turn if off and other would say, including myself, if you are a heavy computer user, never turn it off.

Turning the computer on and off each time would wear out its components, just like a car, if you turn it off each time you stop at the red light, you would harm the engine and other components.

But now, there is the issue of reducing energy use and green IT, is it better to turn off the computer when is not in use, or is it better to put it on standby mood or sleep mood? What would consume less energy? And if we have hundreds of computers, how much energy we would save verses how much tear and wear these computers would suffer for each start up procedure?

I don’t know the right answer, but I leave my laptop on most of the time, I still believe that power on procedure or start up takes a lot of energy to complete.

What your job title says about you

Recently; I had to fill some forms pertaining to my job skills and experiences, I never really had to do that before, I was always hired for the job based on personal interviews.
On the forms that I have to fill, there are a list of job titles that supposed to match my experience and educational backgrounds. Some of the job titles that I need to choose from and are listed under Information Systems Analysts and Consultants are:

1- IT (information technology) consultant
2- computer consultant
3- computer systems analyst
4- management information systems (MIS) analyst
5- systems auditor
6- systems consultant
7- systems security analyst
8- computer analyst
9- computer consultant

I always referred to myself as IT consultant, my educational backgrounds are on the MIS (Management Information Systems) area and my work experiences is ranging from working as desktop support tech working on various support issues, to working on servers, to software testing, to working on network setup and troubleshooting.

I want to know what other IT Consultant think of their job title and do all the titles listed about fall under on big tile of Systems Analysts and Consultant?