Questions Flashcards
What is your management style?
I focus on building TRUST through CANDOR and INTEGRITY
Candor
Honest and open
Accepting criticism
This creates a culture of honesty through SAFETY
Integrity Doing what you say you will Following up - taking action SACRIFICE and courage Assuming blame + Apportioning credit Letting staff know you have their backs
I create a COLLABORATIVE environment,
encouraging staff to CHALLENGE processes and ways of working, and EMPOWER staff to act on their own initiative and manage by exception wherever possible.
EMPATHETIC - I put myself in other people’s places to understand their point of view and see things from their perspective, and understand how they perceive value to ensure the outcome is aligned with both of our objectives to create win-win situations.
This all underpins a desire to develop people
Describe yourself in 3 words
PERSONABLE – approachableand have good relationship management skills
EMPOWERING – essential for buy-in, innovation, collaboration and trust, but I am ultimately accountable
HONEST –candoris crucial for success and for building respect in your peers and staff under your leadership. You must act with integrity and remain accountable. Assume blame when things go wrong and apportion credit when things go well.
REASONABLE – by acting with empathy I can understand all points of view before making a rational and pragmatic decision, I don’t allow myself to be driven by emotions
AMBITIOUS– I’m driven to improve myself and everyone around me
How do you motivate / Lead by example?
Employee empowerment and engagement. Encourage staff to challenge processes and empower them to become involved in projects outside of their daily duties.
Lead by example and with integrity. To do this, you must…
Act with candor and a realist approach. Being overly optimistic doesn’t help anyone, when things are bad you need to be honest, but highlight the positives of any situation and concentrate on what you can change or influence.
Set clear, relevant goals and recognise their achievements, ensuring they know how their performance translates into business value. Active involvement in employee development
Foster a culture of collaboration. This comes from a feeling of safety in the workplace, which comes from candour
ACCOUNTABILITY
EXAMPLES:
AJW build - first one in, last one out, 24 hour days
Site visits
Move servers in the back of my car
Corporate IT - difficulties / benefits
Difficulties
Decentralisation can provide additional redundancy
Ensuring the needs of all business units are met, if the organization is diverse, with many acquisitions etc
Can be slow to enact change
Additional layers of bureaucracy
Can create animosity between local / corporate
Benefits
Cost optimization and effective utilisation of resources, economies of scale
Increased purchasing power - large contracts with vendors
Improved productivity of staff (simpler tasks, scalability, career progression)
Shared best practice and information sharing - reduced silos
Larger organisations tend to be more secure
Business Relationship Management - BRM
Goal - What?
Maximise business value delivered by IT
Aligns IT and the business
Strategy (2-way alignment - business demand and art of the possible)
Investments in technology and organization
Fosters a 2-way appreciation between IT and the business
Strengthens collaboration
Drives a culture of creativity, innovation and shared ownership
Converges cross-functional teams - IT and the business
Eliminates value-depleting silos
Processes - How?
Stakeholder mapping and management exercise
Identify influence
Understand baseline opinion / brand of IT
Build trusting relationships Communication Transparency Quick wins - show that IT can deliver business value (use-case) Track and communicate value recognition
Translation of technology in terms that business leaders can understand
Needs buy-in from the top - start here
Coach other IT leaders on BRM practices
Needs Interpersonal and communication skills Understanding of the business and of technology Client services Project management
Why are you leaving your current role?
Want more responsibility
More scope to enact change
The ability to drive business through IT enablement
Current:
Business as usual
Diluted responsibility
Centralised change is too slow, bureaucratic
What are your strengths?
BRM-Effective business relationship management - communication skills - able to clearly communicate business requirements into technical solutions, and translate from technical to business value.
EMPHATICtoward other people, able to see things from their perspective, their priorities. This allows me to ensure that the outcome of any situation is mutually beneficial, and that I act rationally and pragmatically without being driven by emotion.
I’m good at handlingCRITICISM, I don’t take it personally and I’m able to self-improve and adapt instantly.I concentrate on what I can control
What are your weaknesses?
Being able to detach myself from emotions can work against me, can come across as dispassionate or cold.
Nobody’s perfect.The scope and depth of IT means that no one person can be an expert in everything therefore I am always interested in keeping my skills up to date and seek constructive feedback.
I find it hard to detach from technology. Whilst I’m certainly not a 9-5 person, I believe that a work/life balance is important and I encourage this in my team.
A time when you’ve used initiative
On-Call serviceto meet business demand
Prior to taking on my management role I instigated an emergency response serviceto support a 24/7 business with SLAs which were never missed
Set SLAs which have never been missed
How do you measure value in IT?
Uptime (reliability of IT services) End-user satisfaction First-time fix rate Security breaches Time to ROI of IT-led initiatives Capex vs Opex rate - how does IT support scalability and growth
First 90 Days (approach)
Discovery phase:
Business orientation – people, processes, technology, strategy, commercials
Stakeholder orientation and engagement
Cultural orientation and history – this is the most important (adopt and adapt)
Understanding the level of IT maturity
Approach
Meetings with all IT employees and key stakeholders
Tour facilities and offices
Collate all available information
Gap analysis – skills, process adoption, risk
Process mapping
Secure early wins – low hanging fruit
Prioritise initiatives
Don’t solutionize too soon
Align IT
Align Corporate IT with the business
Align IT with the business
Define and agree the strategy
Align expectations
Budget Priorities
Prioritising
Alignment with strategic business goals
Is the business growing or shrinking
What is the need and appetite for digital transformation, how mature is this process?
Annual demand - end of life hardware, maintenance/contract renewals etc
Minimize risk (in line with business risk appetite)
Information security improvements
Hardware and maintenance
Cloud services
Training and employee development - investment in personnel
Outsourcing and Insourcing
What to outsource?
Leverage internal capabilities
SAAS - O365,
AV with lease and support service
Is it a full-time role? Can we survive with an outsourced service agreement
How would outsourcing this role or function affect company culture?
EXAMPLE - Office 365
Insourcing (retain) Core competencies Breed collaboration - creativity and innovation An impactful culture EXAMPLE - Web Portal AJW
Example - Cost Saving - Data Center / Infra
Data centre consolidation / cloud strategy
Situation Outdated infrastructure Costly maintenance (increasing YOY) Legacy applications Duplication globally 180+ datacentres globally Cyber attacks exposed Security vulnerabilities
Task Reduce number of data centres globally Lower cost Increase security Utilise the Frankfurt datacentre Ensure business continuity and performance
Action
Align IT strategy with business goals to gain buy-in
Cost savings
Security and data integrity
Examples that relate;
Migrate all local data
Maintain relationships with stakeholders - Baseline + UAT
Ensure contractual and GDPR compliance
Increase and encourage use of containerisation and Kubernetes
Result
20% cost saving infrastructure costs (£200k)
Maintenance
Licenses
Backups
Reduction of UK-based data centres to zero
Locally based infrastructure staff were able to work on global initiatives (reduced silo’d working)
Use the UK a template for the datacenter consolidation project
Customer experience - transparent costs, reliability
Security - ISO27001 and GDPR
Buy-in from the top
Investment - resource and budget
Understanding of compliance and contractual requirements
Ensure accountability across the business (everyone is accountable)
Foster a culture of security-awareness (social engineering / internal phishing campaigns etc)
Plan - Do - Check - Act
Audit - gap analysis - risk assessment
Training
Business continuity plan (owned by everyone)
Process definition and mapping
System in place to capture GDPR relevant data (SAP) - SIMPLE!
GDPR was a catalyst for things we should have been doing anyway
