From workshops and one-day seminars to established curriculums, companies are finding ways for IT (information technology) departments to get in touch with their softer side--one that communicates beyond the bits and bytes of a network.
Although it's no revelation that an IT manager's role has changed dramatically, the transition from a technology services provider to a project manager/team leader is often harder than many realize. It requires "soft skills," ranging from better communication with users to creating a stronger bond with the back-end operations of the company--skills that need to be learned and habits that need to be changed.
"IT needs to understand the business challenge the back end is trying to support," says Stephen Bradley, president of Gartner Learning, a unit of the Gartner Group consulting firm. "Communication skills are much more important."
But good business skills often don't come naturally to technical types, so many companies are putting these execs through the paces of lectures and workshops.
Schneider National, a trucking company with more than 3,500 employees and $2.1 billion in revenue, is gearing up for a large-scale, in-house soft-skills effort for its 320 IT managers.
Complex IT projects, such as implementing a new programming language, deploying a sophisticated database for customer information and executing an electronic data interchange capability, require a collaborative effort with the operations side. Technology helps Schneider meet IT objectives as well as fundamental business goals.
Teamwork and communication skills training, once primarily offered to employees on the business side, will now be extended to IT.
"You get to a point with projects where you are starting to manage a change process, not just an IT process," explains Chris Lofgren, Schneider's chief technology officer. "Issues around management and leadership become crucial to the successful integration of those IT services into the company."
Lofgren cites spot pricing of truck shipments as a capability that requires information coordination between the company and customer. Although Lofgren declined to state exact costs, he estimates that 20 percent of the 40 percent increase in the IT training budget for 1998 is for several weeks of soft-skills training.
"It's a huge, huge commitment," he says, explaining that a workshop-style curriculum was established featuring project management and communications classes by outside contractors and the company's senior management. Schneider also is committed to ongoing workshops and seminars.
Lofgren is banking on measurable productivity gains from his IT staff through these efforts.
"It will reduce the cycle time to deliver a new capability that the company has requested," says Lofgren.
And better communication, he says, leads to more effective decision-making and overall project management.
The challenge for Technology Service Solutions, a wholly owned IBM integration subsidiary, was improving the interpersonal skills of its 5,000 service technicians. The last thing a customer wants, TSS officials say, is a surly technician who offers excuses about why a problem can't be fixed.
With customer service and communications at stake, the company invested in one-day workshops with lectures by senior company leaders and role-playing scenarios of service calls. TSS also included a soft-skills curriculum in the training of technicians.
"In today's environment, fixing the hardware is the smallest piece of the job," says Gary Brown, TSS' vice president of operations. Brown believes teaching technicians empathy toward the customer is crucial to maintaining long-term relationships--an issue prominently noted in customer satisfaction surveys.
On one level, communication is simply a matter of tact. "When the technician answers a call, he needs to make the customer feel like [he or she is] the most important in the world--which they are," adds Brown.
For Adaptec Inc., which provides bandwidth management technologies, soft-skills training began at the same time the company reorganized, says Adaptec chief information officer Jim Schmidt.
The soft-skills training included 20 of 80 IT staffers, and Adaptec spent approximately $100,000 on the effort. It focused on honing communications, presentation and facilitation skills.
"Role playing and simulation help people remember the lesson a lot longer than lectures," explains Schmidt.
Initially, there was resistance to the soft-skills effort, but Schmidt forged ahead, aware that the technical staff had to do a better job of getting their ideas across to colleagues if Adaptec was to satisfy the customer.
"The engineers were skeptical. At first it felt a little touchy-feely. 'We're engineers, we write code and what is this trust, confidence and respect nonsense?' But after they went through it, universally they felt it was valuable and a good use of their time because they personally reaped the benefit in improvement in working relationships."
It could be that hard times require soft skills.
John Berry is a new media analyst and consultant. He can be reached at johnb@outlawnet.com.
