Mimi Browning | Seven ways to a better IT career

 

Connecting state and local government leaders

IT Stragety'commentary: In the spirit of broadening professional vistas, the following e-success habits are offered for consideration.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY professionals are smart and dedicated, but they're not perfect. They're not as flip-floppy or garrulous as, say, the presidential candidates, but IT professionals have their own special quirks. Two notable ones are socializing too often in geek packs and solving current problems with old IT capabilities. In the spirit of broadening professional vistas, the following e-success habits are offered for consideration.

Engage the customer. The gold standard for IT success is not your technology brilliance but how well you satisfy customer needs. These needs include business or mission requirements and related areas such as policy, budgets and enterprise strategies.

To win and maintain business, practice the fine art of customer engagement: listen, produce expected results, solicit feedback, establish measurable performance metrics and express thanks often for your customers' support.

English first. Years ago, a federal agency chief information officer was thrown out of the C suite with the admonition not to return until he learned to speak English ' that is, nontechnical English.

To bridge this ever-present gap, you should express IT-centric concepts in mission terms. If you relate an IT concept to business imperatives such as cost reduction, faster program completion or improved operations, you become a more trusted business partner who just happens to be an IT professional.

Enrich professionally. Certifications, training and degrees are critical in today's highly competitive global IT world. Outsourcing and the demand for more credentialed individuals to deliver IT systems and services will continue to affect government and private-sector resource decisions.

Courses, training and/or degree work will increase your expertise and value and enhance overall IT performance.

Educate. For every digital cognoscente, there is the digital caveman who often is an influential customer. Thus, any TLC, or technical learning contribution, from an IT professional will be welcomed. IT mentoring, tutorials, successful case studies and easy-to-understand reference documents or charts are all TLC mechanisms for getting better awareness and buy-in for new IT concepts. Magic happens when you take the time to educate your most important customers.

Eat less PowerPoint. Buried in an old file folder are two items I keep side by side: a 10-year-old, 78-page PowerPoint presentation on an outmoded IT concept and an eight-page PowerPoint presentation that demonstrated results from a plan to cut IT costs across three related organizations.

The keeper PowerPoint is the latter. Content beats IT bling any day of the week. And be green ' using less paper and bandwidth is ecologically smarter.

Encourage new thinking. IT professionals love to solve today's problems with yesterday's IT capabilities. Older systems? Try enterprise resource planning. Information sharing? Build the world's biggest data warehouse. Changing the prevailing mind-set is never easy. Some tips: Socialize new technologies with trusted, progressive thinkers and pilot test concepts to introduce change and reduce risks. Most important, think beyond IT ' policy, governance and acquisition are also critical success factors.

Engage nontraditional colleagues. Make it a habit to socialize with colleagues outside your usual orbit who are influential in your programs or professional success. Take a budget analyst or contracting officer to lunch. Find out what your colleagues' challenges are and discuss how you can assist.

These sessions are excellent opportunities to engage, educate and influence.

Mimi Browning is president of Browning Consulting Group.
X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.