Tom Koulopoulos offers 10 ways to retain your top IT talent.

While we can talk at length about the prospects of IT, there is no doubt that we all need to do what we can to keep the best and brightest in our existing IT organizations. If you’ve been in IT for any appreciable amount of time, you know that there are things that make it a special and unique collection of people and talent. IT is a melting pot with a diverse set of backgrounds and skills compared to other parts of the organization.

For many of us, that is the attraction of IT. Keeping the best and the brightest is a matter of playing to that attraction by putting in place programs that will continue to fuel the reasons we chose IT to begin with.   

#10 – Train

IT professionals are in a constant battle to keep up with the changing landscape of their industry. There are few professions so relentless in their rate of change. It makes sense that you would want to keep these folks relevant, right? Yet some companies actually feel that training their IT professionals can be a risk since it gives them skills that may not be immediately relevant! That’s not the best motivator for folks who know how quickly they can become obsolete!   

#9 – Cross-Skill

IT professionals are only as valuable as their understanding of the problems they are solving. They are also among the most eager to learn new skills. Taking IT professionals out of IT and putting them into the business to help them understand and learn about the context of their users is a powerful motivator. The better they understand this, the more successful and satisfied they will be. For Intel, we developed a course to teach all of its global IT staff how to become world-class trainers and facilitators on the topic of innovation. Yes, Intel -- one the worlds most innovative companies took the time and made the investment to teach its technology team the broader skills they need to enable the business.  

#8– Involve

In times of heightened uncertainty, we all want to be part of the conversation. Make sure you keep the challenges and opportunities as transparent as possible. Periodic meetings that address the changing landscape of IT, not just from your firm’s point of view, but from an industry perspective can help give people an informed sense for what the real risks and opportunities are. I’ve yet to find a professional who does not feel better about his or her prospects when they are able to participate in the process of defining the organization.

#7 – Recognize Success

This one is a no-brainer, which is why I’m always amazed when it’s not being done. I’m not talking just about recognition in the annual employee review, but in company forums. One large organization I worked with awarded the status of “Fellow” to its lead IT performers. The award came with a gold plated medallion, a framed certificate and a lapel pin. You may think that all of this is a bit hokey. You couldn’t be more wrong. Every person who was designated as a fellow had that medallion and certificate proudly displayed not only at this organization but every subsequent firm they worked for! Oh yes, and those lapel pins, they were worn proudly enough to put a Free Mason to shame! Despite this I still run into leaders who see recognition as being purely a matter of remuneration. After 30 years of leading organizations, I can tell you with no equivocation that money is one small part, many times the smallest part, of recognition. 

#6 – Advertise Success

OK, so you’ve recognized your IT superstars. But to whom have you advertised this recognition? More than likely you’ve broadcast it only to IT.  What about the rest of the organization? These folks aren’t IT superstars, they are firm superstars, industry superstars. Get the message? Recognition is as valuable as the size of the community who knows about it. Send a company-wide announcement; send out a press release, post the award in the person’s local neighborhood newspaper. In short, do whatever you can to make a big deal about their achievements, because it is a big deal.   

#5 – Develop Team-based Core Competencies

IT has an historic reputation of being a bunch of geeks locked up in a closet with a crack under the door high enough slip an occasional pizza under. That’s exactly the sort of IT that’s moving to the Cloud. The IT that’s relevant and necessary to your firm is team‐based IT. These are IT professionals who understand the process of teamwork, are adept at meetings, group interactions, and bridging the divides of an organization. Keep in mind that of all the functions in an organization, IT is the one that is likely to cross the most silos.

#4 – Develop Sourcing Competency

IT will increasingly need to manage a portfolio of service providers who span the globe. In this sort of environment IT professionals need to master a set of skills that expand far beyond technology. For example, trying to manage a global workforce without training in cultural sensitivity is a disaster waiting to happen. If you do not equip your people with these sorts of skills, they will spend most of their time frustrated as the complexity of IT sourcing increases.

#3 – Create Free Space

IT professionals are thinkers and problem solvers. Everyone in IT has experienced the addictive euphoria of problem solving. The vast majority of us eventually grow out of that pure problem-solving chapter of our career and fondly look back on it. As our careers progress, we move on to bigger, more complex problems. But what we often do not realize is that, as the problems grow, so too must the time we have to unplug from the problems. This sort of free space to think is severely lacking in most IT organizations. Yet many of the most successful innovators, from 3M to Google, give their people time away from their day-to-day tasks to work on projects that are personally gratifying.

#2 – Challenge

The late Peter Drucker once told me that the best way he knew to motivate knowledge workers was to challenge them. In the two decades since he told me that, I’ve tested it on thousands of people. Guess what? He was spot on. The best and the brightest are always driven by the challenge, and those who are not your best - but who aspire to be - will follow the lead.

#1 – Lead

There is no denying that IT is changing and in many cases it is being outright challenged as an unnecessary internal cost. This sort of uncertainty creates high levels of stress. If you cannot lead IT to a future state in a way that acknowledges and clearly addresses the root causes of this stress, and do so transparently and authentically you will lose your best people.

At the end of the day we all want to choose to follow a leader who deserves our loyalty. Leadership’s role at times like this is to provide a pathway from the present into the future, which only becomes obvious in retrospect, and yet inspires confidence, trust and loyalty in the present. I recall very vividly one of the most profound examples of this ideal in my own experience.

In 2004 a company that I founded was acquired by Perot Systems (now Dell). Shortly after the acquisition I visited India as part of the Perot Executive team to meet with all of the employees of an Indian subsidiary who had joined the company. The plan was to present the leadership to the Indian employees and to let them ask questions. Something, which at that time, was considered a big deal since it illustrated the transparency and access that leadership would bring to the Indian operation.

At one of the first Q&A sessions a junior Indian associate asked a question that came directly out of left field.   “What is the difference between a leader and a manager?” There were about 300 associates in the audience and they all went silent. The five of us on the leadership team looked at each other for a moment. I leaned over to the microphone and told the associate what a great question he had asked, mostly to buy some time.

Then it occurred to me that I had once asked Peter Drucker the same question. His answer, which I shared as Drucker’s point of view, was that a manager is somebody you have to follow; whereas a leader is somebody you choose to follow. There was another moment of silence and suddenly all 300 associates rose to their feet in applause. In that moment I realized that the great power of a leader came not from his or her vision but rather from the power of those who chose to follow.  

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