Working within a framework and structured environment builds organizational stability and in-depth experience. To grow and innovate, thinking outside the box is recommended. Can growth and innovation only happen trampling over stability and experience? As organizations, can we get our people to contribute towards growth and innovation while staying within their current boxes? Or, do we need new, different box?

Contributor

• • Mark Allen, Chief Information Officer, Mississippi Department of Human Services

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Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:22]:

Hello, and welcome to this segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com, and as always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter and look for this show as hashtag change and hashtag innovation. So the topic for today is Thinking Inside, Outside Or In A New Box, and we have Mark Allen, who’s the chief information officer for Mississippi Department of Human Services. Hey, Mark. How are you?

Mark Allen [00:00:48]:

I am good this morning. How about you?

Sanjog Aul [00:00:50]:

Very good, sir. Thank you, and, so the topic we picked up today has come out from these conversations we always have, among our peers or even in social setting, and we always congratulate someone who says who kinda thinks outside of the box, which means, like, okay, outside of the norm and they can do something new and creative. When we say someone is a very structured manner, is very procedural, it’s almost becomes derogatory, but is that truly the case? Or for that matter, if there is something we have to do innovative, but it still requires a structure, what does that, what do we do with that? So in all of these cases, we came up with this concept, or rather we were inspired by some people who have been writing and thinking about this, is how do you have organizations build the capabilities within their constructs that they already have so they can have stability. They can have in-depth experience that develops because some of the people do the same thing over and over again, and then you have outside the box type of thinkers who are able to do innovation, and finally, if you have to do something new and innovative but still operationalize it, you have to perhaps build a new box. Hope the concept is coming across clear but we will further explore it. So Mark, if we were to, look at this whole concept that we are proposing here, we know that organizations need to instill trust, and in order for that, they have to deliver in a reliable fashion. Would you say it is better that first they become used to thinking inside the box before they go outside?

Mark Allen [00:02:35]:

Yeah. You do. You have to develop that trust as you just said, and that trust really can start small, which is inside the box. Because if your organization doesn’t trust what you’re currently doing, then how are they going to trust you to be able to move forward with new innovations. So, yeah, you’ve got to really be able to maintain that trust with what you have currently inside the box before they will trust you to go outside that box.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:07]:

Now that said, we also at the same time I mean, today’s day and age, if you are stagnant or you’re not doing something new, you may be moving towards ultimate doom, if you will, because everyone is changing. People are not hunkering down. So if since that’s the mantra too, how do you eat the cake and have it too? And on one end, you want the stability and people working in a structured fashion to deliver it, and then you want to also move ahead. That doesn’t mean you’re gonna have the luxury of getting two separate departments, if you will, who would do two different things. Yes. People are building teams like that, but I’m sure there will always be a request for both teams to be structured at some point, leverage your experience or develop it, at the same time, think totally differently, totally out of the box.

Mark Allen [00:03:57]:

Yeah. I mean, you’ve got to continue to maintain what you’ve got. One thing that I’ve found is, as you said in the beginning of the show, is talking to peers from other areas, listening to what they have, what they are doing, and sometimes just not even reinventing the wheel, but taking ideas from other people and talking to your team and trying to instill those and getting their opinion in regards, and when you have a team, hopefully, you’ve all got good people and they’re good thinkers, and even though they may be inside that box, as we say, I think most IT people are wanting to move forward. They like the challenge of new things. So yes, the challenge is how do we continue to maintain, but how do we move forward with the new innovations, and just like I said, talking to your peers within, I’m in state government, within other state agencies or within other states and finding out what they are doing is, for me, always a good plan of action.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:15]:

No. So getting and I’m sure state is not some people say that there is no competition for different state and city and county and federal departments, but perhaps there is because there is some funding that has to come. You have to justify your presence and citizens are out there watching how you spend the tax dollars. So that means you have to do something in order for you to prove your worth or whether you as an individual or anyone in your team or even from the government function standpoint. So you have to have people working in these two lanes, if you will. Do they ever converge or you try to maintain separate people who are like, out there coming up with things, new ideas, and then there are others who would want to come and work their specific hours and get done the same thing over and over, and they’re happy doing it?

Mark Allen [00:06:11]:

You’ve got all types of people. Yes. I have employees that are happy to come in, work their 8 to 9 hours, do their job, and then go home at the end of the day, but you’ve got some that really want to move forward, but I found that a lot of those that they’re happy doing that, they’re just staying in their box working the 8 to 5. If you can bring them into the fold, and I have found that sometimes just to get them out of their shell, if you ask their opinion or if you’re looking at a new project, a new piece of technology, sometimes just giving it to them and saying, I want your opinion and will you look at this? And sometimes that can bring them out of the shell and that can bring them into the other side of the realm of looking at new innovation. Sometimes you just got to pull it out of those people. Everybody, I think, has it in them. It’s just sometimes you have to really get down and pull it out of them, but then on the flip side, from a management standpoint, you can’t just ask their opinion and then just completely dismiss it every time. Otherwise, they’ll quit giving it to you. So you’ve got to have that balance there of being able to know what to give somebody and then being able to take their opinion, value that opinion, get feedback from them as well as give feedback to them. So I think you can have some separate areas because you got to have people who are always looking forward. You got to have people who are still maintaining, but they’ve got to cross because you can’t just completely separate the two, especially in this day and age. We know technology moves so quickly that if you don’t stay up it will leave you behind very quickly.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:16]:

No. So you do ask them, but then if you look at the way you measure their performance or they get measured, they get incentive. Ask someone who is creating widgets or doing data entry. Would you suddenly go and say, okay, I’ll give you a bonus because you showed us a brand new idea, but you would penalize that person if he or she does not deliver in that consistent fashion. So while you may have a lot of asks of these people, do you think your way to motivate or incent them is also being changed to that effect?

Mark Allen [00:08:57]:

Well, state government, I’ve been in state government 15 years. It’s a little bit different. We don’t get bonuses, and so it’s kind of a little bit harder in that regard, I think, than the incentive is. If there is a position that is coming open that’s a little bit higher, you’ve got those people that if you want them to move up, move into management, some along those lines, they’ve got to be able to think outside the box. Otherwise, they’re really going to kind of get stuck where they are. So you kind of breed that from the people to try to get them thinking beyond what they just do.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:44]:

So, Mark, in the way you responded to this question, are you expecting people to somehow wake up and suddenly become that rock star you want them to be? Or is there something that the management and the culture has to do to bring them to that level where the spark comes from within, and you cannot inject a spark in someone, and in order for that to happen, something has to happen in the environment.

Mark Allen [00:10:09]:

Yeah, and some people just don’t want to. There are others that do, and sometimes you have to instill that spark in them, but, yeah, some of them just it’s tough. Like you said, some of them just they are content with where they are, but I think most people have something else to offer, and sometimes, us as management, we’ve got to be able to pull that out of them and get it out of them, and sometimes, they’ll fight you tooth and nail, but I still think technology people, we always like the next cool thing that comes along. So getting them to look at that, I think, is part of what we do because if we don’t interact with the team, it’s kind of hard to manage.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:09]:

So would you say whether it’s IT or the business counterparts, are we developing doers or thinkers? Because whatever the action that you’d see at an individual level, at a team level, at a department level, or organizational level, it will follow some sort of a thinking, collective thinking or individualized thinking. What are we developing here? Would you say the reason I bring this up is to have a segue to our box concept. If I’m thinking inside the box at all times, that’s how I’m working. If I’m not even nudge like, moving myself within even while being inside the box, that means the scope of improving in anything that I do starts getting minimized, but if you encourage that thinking to shift, even though you kinda create a box, a framework, or a structure, then you have at least an expectation, and the person also thinks that, okay. I have been given some flexibility, and some people think that I’m worthy of thinking and not just being a widget maker. So what are you telling your people? How are they contributing? Just by doing?

Mark Allen [00:12:23]:

No. I mean, some of them are doers. I mean, you’ve got to have doers. You got to have workers. You got to have thinkers. One of the first things I did in this job and the previous job is I pulled my team together on the first day, and I told them, I said, I don’t wanna ever hear anybody say it’s not my job. They may not be a network specialist, so they may not be able to really talk intelligently along that line, but I don’t want anybody to think that they are just stuck in their little area. I want it to be a complete team. So even though you’ve got the doers and you’ve got the thinkers, they’ve got to be able to go together, because if you have a thinker, they can think of all the great things there is to do, but if there’s nobody to do, then it’s not gonna go anywhere. So you really have got to have the combination of both, and sometimes, the same person can be a doer and a thinker, but, again, I personally think that most people can get outside their box, sometimes with just a little push, and so they may be a doer and not realize that they’re a thinker, and so get that out of them because there’s just so much knowledge in a team, and you don’t wanna keep it bottled up just in the doers.

Sanjog Aul [00:14:03]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back, and let’s talk about this concept of the box that we’re talking about. So think for a second. Consistent delivery would require you to work within a framework, a box, which has got specific boundaries. Now if you want to conjure up ideas, we need a context, which is in a form is a box and it could be a different one. So if you want them to move from one to another, we are still saying change of the structure, change of the framework means change of a different box. Now if you are going to fundamentally come outside of what the frameworks you created just because you feel the world outside is fundamentally changing, so I cannot just be building new boxes or shift within the box. That means you have to come outside of the box, but once you are done with that uber thinking of sorts, then you have to come back and really implement it because we cannot just be thinking. We have to eventually convert that into reality. That means you’ll have to create yet another set of boxes. So how is management and leadership in an organization thinking to morph where they are and go to the next one and at all times maintaining a consistent delivery if this box concept will be utilized. Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and explore.

Speaker 0 [00:15:28]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about our program, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:22]:

Welcome back. So when we went into the break, I explained the concept of box. So, Mark, here, the thing is the management doesn’t, of course, think in literal sense like these boxes, but I’m assuming there is an intent there for management to always hope to improve the thinking approach and levels and capability of the people who are working and even doing because whatever they will do will quantitatively and qualitatively has a better chance of improving if they put their minds in to work and improve that, and that should happen voluntarily. So what is management’s agenda here to improve this? Is there, first of all, an agenda to improve the thinking of their workers, or are they better off just doing?

Mark Allen [00:17:10]:

I think there always has to be an agenda for management. We rely on our employees, the doers, because we can’t do it all, and so you have them, and then, again, I go back to the point I made earlier of getting their input. If you never get an employee’s input, then they’re just gonna sit there, and they’re not gonna ever say anything. They’ll just kinda sit there. So you want to get their input, which I think drives them to start thinking, and if you truly value their input, they will bring you more and more ideas. Even just those doers, as we talked about earlier, that may get stuck in that rut of being inside their own little box, if they think that they can come to you with an idea and you’ll listen to that idea and maybe buy into that idea, then they’re going to appreciate that. They’ll appreciate you as a supervisor, and so therefore, they will continue to look at more things and just really think more than just do. So as long as we can continue to build that, and we’ll go back to the first question of build that trust, trust between management and your staff, and they feel that they can trust you and bring something to you, they will start thinking outside the box, and even though we may have to be doing, currently within that box, we all know that we can eventually move outside.

Sanjog Aul [00:19:03]:

See, natively, we all were given this gift of being able to think. It gets stifled or gets buried over time. So if you’re trying to rekindle that capability or that fire within, that means, number 1, they have to be motivated. Secondly, maybe the new style or different ways they can get better at thinking in the context you want them to think. Where would this motivation come from? And where would that increased or improved capacity or capability come from so that they become better thinkers? And all along, they are able to channelize that thinking capability in the best interest of the organization because, of course, that’s one of the agendas you have. How would you motivate and how would you get them to build their capability?

Mark Allen [00:19:58]:

For me, I kinda go back to what I said just a minute ago and motivating. I know when I was an employee before I got into management that if I had a supervisor that just didn’t really ever want to listen to me, I started to not say anything, but when I would have a manager who would listen to me, it would motivate me, and so that’s the way I kind of look at it, again, is I try to let my employees come to me with ideas. I’m not gonna be able to think of everything that there is, and there are a lot of good ideas out there, and so I think that just kind of breeds upon itself is that when an employee can begin to think and know that their voice can be heard, that motivates them to go forward, to think even more.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:03]:

What about the people who don’t contribute? They are not the ones who voluntarily come out, and that could be multiple reasons. It’s their personality, or they may just have never been able to spend the time in it. Maybe they don’t have breathing room because you always have one deadline after another, and third is they’ve never felt a need. Whereas you feel they should come back to you with ideas and you will hear, but if they don’t come to you, would you go and nudge them?

Mark Allen [00:21:32]:

Yeah. I do. One of the other things I did and I hadn’t heard too many people do this, but when I first started, I asked each one of my employees to do 3 things for me. On a sheet of paper, just put a little bit something about themselves, put a little bit something about what they currently did because I was new to the organization. I wanted to know what they were doing, and then I also asked them to put some goals that they had, goals professionally if they wanted to, goals personally as well, but I told them to take it another step forward. I didn’t want them just to write it down on a piece of paper or type it up on a piece of paper and then just put it in my box. I told them that each one of them, once they did that, was going to have to come to my office. We’re going to have to sit down and have a conversation, and, so, therefore, they knew that I was open to listening to them, just from day one. Now there’s still some of those that are so nervous about doing that that it’s hard to get them out of that shell that I talked about, but it did allow most of them to know that they were able to come to me for whatever they needed to, and it showed that I had an interest in them as well. So, if they know that I’m open to talking with them and listening to them, I have found that of my employees, I’ve got all different types because we’re all different. We’re made differently, but I don’t think I have a single one of them that can’t come to me for whatever reason, and, you know, some of them come with great ideas. Some of them come with ideas and we sit and we discuss it and talk about something else. So each of us, management, we handle it differently. We’re not going to manage exactly the same. So you’ve got to come up with how you are able to pull those people out, and that’s one of the things I did, and it worked from day 1 and really has been able to get some good dialogue going with staff and, again, allowing them to realize that they can think outside that box. Now some of them are so introverted, which a lot of IT people are, that they’re still very nervous about it, but it seems to work for me.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:19]:

And if you are going to take the raw thinkers, and of course, there should be some in the organization already, and if they are supposed to be doing some raw thinking, they have to be able to eventually come to, say, working within a box at some point. Or do you have those R&D people who would go from one innovation to another, one raw thinking to another? I’m not sure there are many organizations who have that practice anymore.

Mark Allen [00:24:45]:

It seems that times get tight and staff gets smaller sometimes that it’s hard to have just those people who can sit and think, but there’s gotta be that cross. You can have all the best ideas in the world, but if you can’t get it to the team and get the team bought in, then it’s hard to sit and just constantly come up with new ideas, but you’ve gotta be able to get them implemented.

Sanjog Aul [00:25:21]:

So let me present to you a scenario where we know that some innovation has to be done. Some raw thinking has to be done, where people do not automatically start tying into saying, oh my god. If I come up with this idea or this project, I’ll be the one left holding the bag because I’ll have to execute it. If people are separated out, then they are, of course, able to work better in terms of fundamentally rethinking what they have been trying to, how they would innovate or what new ideas would come into play, but then these people, at some point, would also have to embrace maybe the same idea or some other idea to say, okay. Now in order for this to really be realized, it cannot be a pie in the sky. It has to have some semblance to things with a process running properly, and then those type of things. So these people at one end and this is a capability. So let’s talk about capability versus a person in particular. So you need that capability of raw thinking, and then you need a capability of taking that raw thinking into something which is more tangible, which is in form of some box. Maybe it’s a new box. How will you create that capability? Not trying to make the same person do 20 things necessarily, but you know what? Let’s do this. Take a moment to think. We’ll take a quick break. We’ll be right back and explore.

Speaker 0 [00:26:51]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:42]:

Welcome back. So, we are talking about a scenario where we’re trying to build capability, but not necessarily, one person doing it all. So if you want to have thinking convert into something tangible, that means you will have to have these people or a set of people doing the thinking and kind of work in a box and then eventually create a structure and then get them working. So if this is to be seen as a capability where you have a number of in-house resources and outside, and you know this box concept that we have introduced here, how would you go about enabling it? And I understand that you come from government where you may have lesser flexibility or maybe resource constraints, but that’s where the leaders shine when they’re able to still make this happen.

Mark Allen [00:28:32]:

Yeah. You’ve got the structure, but another thing is a simple term called think groups, groups where you’ve got the innovations, you’ve got the doers and you come in and get in a room and think about those things, and me as the CEO, I kind of lead that of where we want to go, such as what we’re going through right now is a migration from a mainframe to a Linux platform on our systems because we didn’t have the funds to look at doing a complete rip and replace for 5 systems. So, a couple of years ago, when I first started exploring the idea, I brought the team in, and said, okay. This is where I think we need to go. Give me feedback, and, of course, it was several meetings. It wasn’t just one. On a large scale project, it’s gonna take multiple meetings to discuss the things. So they’re getting a think group together. You’ve got the innovation people, you’ve got the doers, you’ve got your network specialists, your programmers, your database administrators, all the different pieces and puzzles that have to get together and discuss those things. So we do have the structure of management leading, getting the ideas out there and then getting the feedback from those people that are the experts in their particular areas.

Sanjog Aul [00:30:17]:

Would you lose knowledge in the process? Because, of course, you’re using outside capability, but the original raw thinking that was done, it brought an idea. It was a creative process, but that knowledge of creation or how did they go about looking through it is of tremendous value because you want that to also not be lost after a product or a creation is delivered, and you want your people to be somewhere part of it if at all you’re using some third party. So those concepts which were used to create something are also to be well understood because eventually, as we all know, we would love for all of this to happen internally at some point or at least be able to do more of this internally versus paying top dollars to consultants or external capability. How do you enable that conversion of outside thinking and raw concepts and ability to think raw and bring that in the organization?

Mark Allen [00:31:24]:

And I’ll continue on with our project here. One of the things we put into our RFP, our request for proposals, was training of staff. So, as we move to a new platform, we want that outside vendor to instill that knowledge to current staff. So we made sure we put in there that they would do the training even though they may be a system integrator who’s coming in and doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Once they are out the door, we’ve got to be able to maintain and go from there. So training is always a good thing too. Anytime you can get people trained up and do our technology or do our versions of things, that’s always a good thing. You’re constantly learning, at least I hope everyone is constantly learning, and if you’ve got a project going on, you definitely want them learning about that project, knowing that knowledge, and sometimes, get that knowledge transfer from if you do have a third party, or, in case you get somebody who wants to retire, you definitely got to have the cross training going on. So that not just one person, if they walk out the door, takes all that knowledge with them. So, you know, cross training is a must as well.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:52]:

Now we spoke about all of these different boxes, and we suggest that our people move within the boxes, create new boxes, think outside, you name it. Now all of that said, when and how frequently do you think the management, which includes you and your superiors and peers, are looking at these boxes, their presence and their shape, who is in it. You see what I mean? How frequently and how qualitatively do you watch for it? Because sometimes if these boxes start getting created, get destroyed or recreated or reshaped, all of that is happening in a very fluid fashion, and you know that it has to be optimum. So what is your process of making sure that this is not degrading?

Mark Allen [00:33:45]:

I think you constantly have to watch what’s going on around you. You can’t just be sitting behind a desk and waiting for things to come to you. So you’ve got to be able to see what’s out there and have constant communication. Communication is key in any organization, whether it’s IT or whatnot. As far as superiors, there are some IT projects that if you’re looking at security or just redoing data center or adding storage, something like that, but when it comes to dealing with users and your clients or your customers, it’s really kind of almost got to be a business project, not an IT project, and so there’s got to be that buy-in of being able to look at it also from a business sense, but you’ve got to have your finger on the pulse of what’s happening, and if you don’t have your finger on that pulse, as you said, those boxes will end up being destroyed. There’s always gonna be mistakes that are made. No one’s perfect, and sometimes boxes will just get destroyed on their own, but, if that happens, you take what transpired, learn from it, move on, and since we’re talking about boxes, if you build a new box, then you’re able to build it stronger and so that it hopefully won’t be destroyed.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:27]:

See, the way you approach this, which is amazing, where you are looking at the results. And those results are telling you whether it’s going in the right direction. Now there is one school of thought regarding leadership and management where we are not just looking at results only, but also what has happened during this whole process, what kind of capabilities, competencies, and learning that is happening, which is developing your people because you will not do this project as the last project on this planet Earth. You will do the next project and you want smarter people or people who worked through this first project became smarter and they’ll create more value for the next one. So on one hand, your response was to say, okay. Let’s look at the outcome, and based on that, we will know what happened, and then we learn lesson, but there may be a lot of value in watching as it happens so that if there has to be a tweak or some learning is not happening while we’re delivering results, we may be able to say, you know what? Let’s slow down. Yes. We will get there 1 week faster, but it is also gonna destroy the morale or the learning opportunity for my people. Do you think we are approaching a little more holistically versus just being results based and say, go, go, go, get the project done, and then get on to the next one?

Mark Allen [00:36:46]:

No. I mean, you have to; results are always the positive thing whether they’re I guess, they could be negative results, but you learn from those, and so you turn it into a positive, but, yeah, you have to watch the progression also, because there are lessons learned throughout each step. You can’t just look at the end result and know whether it’s a complete failure or a complete success. So, there could be those lessons learned all along the way. So, yeah, you have to continually watch. You can’t just sit back and wait for the results, and a lot of times you see what’s going on, sometimes you don’t, and you have to figure out what is happening in there, and, again, I’ll go back to the communication thing. You gotta have the communication with each of those pieces and parts, with each of those people that are part of that team, and learn along the way as well.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:01]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back, and when we come back, let’s also look at an opportunity for us to give these people who have been working in one or the other boxes, maybe a newer box or an older box, forever, for them to come out of their boxes for fresh air, and that is almost deliberate because we know that at some point, there is a law of diminishing returns if you keep having people work only in boxes. So are we saying those training? I mean, I know the normal answer would be, okay. We’ll send them to a training or we will give them another project, but does that really rejuvenate them? How do you measure that these people have really gotten the fresh air they deserved and they needed? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:38:53]:

Today, enterprise technology is both strategic and global. Each week on CTN CIO Talk Network, IT thought leaders from around the world share their experience with listeners as they discuss with Sanjog Aul how they are trimming costs and partnering with business to innovate and help IT become more competitive, better care for customers, and improve the corporate bottom line. If you want to keep up with IT thought leadership, listen to CTN, CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul at ciotalknetwork.com. You are listening to CTN CIO Talk Network with Sanjog Aul. Now back to the show.

Sanjog Aul [00:39:43]:

Welcome back. So, Mark, fresh air, very important for all of us. We got to get them and, of course, go back and do our jobs, but then sometimes people may not do it. You wait for them to do it. They may not always feel the need, but if they don’t come out, then you have diminishing returns. How do you make sure that this is happening?

Mark Allen [00:40:04]:

I kinda go back to what I mentioned earlier. I like to get opinions from people, and even if they don’t want to just give it to me freely on their own, sometimes if I’ve got an idea, I may give it to that person that doesn’t come to me very often and ask for their opinion to work them out of that box that they’re in. So there again, as I mentioned earlier, I think when an employee knows that you value their opinion, they’ll be willing to give it to you and give it to you honestly, and not just tell you what they think you want to hear. I don’t want them to give me my opinion back to me. I want them to give me their opinion, and so I’ve got to give it to them. We talked about training. Training is always good, but if they don’t utilize that training, then it’s really kind of a waste. So if you do get them to training, you’ve got to make sure that you continue to feed that by giving them those projects, by giving them ideas so that they can do some research on the idea and be able to bring something tangible back to you.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:33]:

And so what you mentioned just now is about those people given or you ask them for ideas. Here, we are talking about giving them exposure to something they are not even doing on a regular basis. You fundamentally shift or take them out of their box and get them that fresh air or a new environment or a new way of thinking and some breathing time. If you want to give them fresh air, but they are knee-deep or neck deep into what they are doing, they’ll not enjoy the fresh air. How do you give breathing room to your people? Because I know most IT departments, if not the business side, are always complaining about I don’t have time to breathe, and I’ve got 20 projects and more than spilling plates. So is that something you can facilitate and insulate them from outside pressure and give them that pressure? And if you do that, how do you manage to do it?

Mark Allen [00:42:25]:

Yeah. That’s part of what you’ve got to be able to do, is manage that time for those staff and realize where their pressure points are, if they’re getting overwhelmed or not. Sometimes, you may have to back them off with something to give them that fresh air, but as you said, it’s tough with so many different projects going on, a lot of different things, people wear different hats. It can get overwhelming very quickly, and so, yes, you’ve got to be able to recognize that and be able to give them that fresh air. Because if you burn somebody out, then you’ve done them no good nor your organization any good, and so you really have got to, I’m going to go back to my phrase I used earlier, keep your finger on the pulse of your department and knowing those people and being able to recognize it. Like I said, if you’re just a manager who’s sitting behind your desk all day and not interacting, not communicating, you’re not gonna be able to see those things, and then I think also from the other standpoint of being an effective leader, they’ve got to be able to trust that if they come to you and say, okay. I’m overwhelmed. How do we sit back and pull something down, slow a project down so that they can get that fresh air? Like I say, you burn somebody out, you’ve done them no good and you’ve done your organization no good. So you’ve got to be able to recognize those things, and communication with your staff and being involved, being an effective leader is what you’ve got to do.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:26]:

Now one is that you take the baton and say I’m gonna take control of what type of boxes exist and how people work in them, etcetera, but the epitome of a well working organization would be that while you will help them and assist and be by their side as they work, let them come up with ways by which they continually challenge their own boxes and volunteer reshaping them, and you watch, but not at the same time get nervous that, oh my god. Now this is going to disrupt my workflow. Is this a damn if I do, damn if I don’t situation, or is it something which is realistically possible that you allow them to break their boxes, but only to the organization’s benefit? Can you have this managed chaos as a way of managing which will help the organization? I mean, it looks good on paper and while I’m talking as a show host. What do you think in practice? Can we manage this? Because if we could, this would have great results.

Mark Allen [00:45:31]:

Yeah. A manager can’t do it all. That’s why they’re there, is to help manage, but you got to be able to trust your people to go and do stuff. Because if you’re constantly having to do it for them, then do you really need them if you’re having to do it for them? So you want them to take the initiative. You want them to take pride in having ownership of something. Ultimately, it does flow up though and it’s ultimately my responsibility; I’m responsible for the IT department. So I still got to kind of keep an eye on it and sometimes nudge them in the right direction, steer them in the right direction, but you want them to feel empowered to be able to take that upon themselves and really have some ownership and have some pride in what they’re doing. If you’re constantly taking the project over and not letting them do what you’ve tasked them to do, then you’re probably doing them a disservice as well as the organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:55]:

Now if you were to look at any of the organizations where people are working, some perceptions get developed, whether it is created by you or you want them to think a certain way or they start developing their own perceptions as they’ve gone about living their lives at home and also at work, but then the reality is the most effective combination is a great manager or a leader like yourself who’s letting them do what they want to do, and they themselves are willing to challenge their boxes, and finally, which is most important, they see the things the way they are in the very most naked authentic fashion versus through any lenses, which either you make them wear or they wear themselves. How do you ensure that that’s happening as your people are working in or outside or in new boxes?

Mark Allen [00:47:49]:

So say, so you’re saying them

Sanjog Aul [00:47:52]:

I mean, see, the thing is, I say that this color is green, but you give them a blue lens or it says, no. It is yellow. So, whatever the thing is, they have to learn to see it in an absolute sense versus through your lenses or their perceptions or prejudices. How do you get them out of it so that they are at all times looking at it in its purest form? Because that’s where many times we undermine the true potential of what could get done and what whosoever is doing it, how best they could have done.

Mark Allen [00:48:24]:

Yeah. Again, we all have our opinion in this, that, and the other, but, ultimately, you gotta look at the business needs, and what are the needs of the business and make sure that they are looking through those lenses of what business is. If you’re going way off out in left field, then it’s not beneficial. So sometimes you just got to steer them back in and make sure that they do have the right lenses on. Some people are gonna be hard headed and not want to change, but that’s what we have to do is be able to communicate with them why we’re going down a certain road. Again, we still want their opinion and are willing to listen to it, but you can’t take everybody’s opinion and go forward with every idea that’s out there. You’ve got to listen and weigh the good and the bad of each one of them and then move forward, but you’ve got to take the business needs back to our customers or our clients and our end users and determine what’s going to be the best course in that regard.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:46]:

On behalf of our show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, Mark, for sharing your thoughts on how organizations can allow their people to think inside the boxes they are in, move things around, and maybe think outside the box or maybe reshape the boxes in which they think so that you get the best outcome as individuals, as teams, as departments, and as organizations. Thank you so much again.

Mark Allen [00:50:11]:

Thank you. It has been my pleasure. I appreciate the invite.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:15]:

Thank you so much. Listeners, please like us on Facebook. Search for CTN, CIO Talk Network, and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CIO Talk Network. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care and God bless.