v21.0 - Snow Day!

Good morning folks,

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I'm able to fire off an early morning musing today.  We were hit hard last night by a freezing rain storm and as a result, almost all (if not all) the schools in the province are shut down.  The roads are very icy today and it just isn't worth getting in an accident over (or worse) trying to make it into work this morning.  Therefore, I'm working from home.  I always work better from home; less distractions and more comforts.  It begs the question, why doesn't every company allow their employees work from home?

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I suspect it has something to do with a few bad apples spoiling the basket.  Working from home entails a bit of trust on the behalf of the employer to the employee to do their job almost completely unsupervised.  I know for my work, a lot of the people are not here because they are forced to work and consider it a part-time gig; this is a career.  Of course not everyone treats their careers the same way.  Some coast through life and just get by, others works their fingers to the bone (so to speak) and achieve the same thing.  My role in IT has changed a lot over the past few years.  Initially moved to Halifax to continue on with my UNIX/Linux Admin technical career and ended up getting into IT management.  Though I wish I had some training before getting involved in it, I feel I've done a fairly good job thus far which is backed up by the extra responsibilities I've been given and the list of important tasks I've been assigned to complete.  I don't take my job lightly and with other people's jobs are on the line (especially those I'm directly responsible for) I take it even more seriously.

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So how does one become a good manager?  Well in order to figure out what you need to do to become a good manager you need to know what a good manager is.  Some people will go through their entire management career thinking they are a good manager only to find out they are not all they thought they were.  So how does one measure a good manager?  Well, there are several factors to consider before you can really start to see how complicated being a good manager is.  For example, a manager is responsible for their employees (or team).  They are responsible to ensure the work gets done and gets done well.  In essence, this is the core of management and how a lot of managers are measured.  Of course there is also a "people" variable to this complex equation that needs to be considered.  People are very diverse and very dynamic.  What affects one person greatly may have no affect on another.  Part of being a good manager is being able to quickly identify and adapt to your employee's needs.  I'm fortunate enough to have managers who know how to do this and do it well.  I'm also fortunate that they are both family oriented individuals who have children of their own and understand what it's like.  Family first, that is their motto.

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Anyway folks, I've gone on about managers too much this morning.  The clock says 8am so I need to really focus on my job now.  Granted I've been up working since 7am, I still need to be sure I'm online and readily avaialble.  Until next time.

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Cheers,
Al