Leaders: Invoke Your Inner Geek Part 3 of 4 – Love Your Geeks.
by lind7496 • September 15, 2012 • Inspiration, leadership • 0 Comments
As stated earlier, the non-technical leader’s ability to lead technological innovation is critical for an organizations success. Figuring out that secret sauce is something that once discovered, should be in every leader’s bag of tricks and will be part of invoking their inner geek. The people who deliver these successes are, as described by Paul Glen in his book Leading Geeks,
“… the highly intelligent, usually introverted, extremely valuable, independent-minded, hard-to-find, difficult-to-keep technology workers who are essential to the future of your company.”
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Glen advises us that these technological heroes may have titles like “…programmer, product manager, project manager, quality assurance engineer, system designer, system architect, program manager, technical writer, help desk technician, deployment specialist, trainer, network manager, Web designer, database administrator, desktop support technician, or telecommunications specialist.” They could even be Chief Information Officers.
The three “C’s” to remember for loving your geeks are context, content, and carbohydrates.
If you’re using technology to lead change in your organization, there’s no doubt that there is a lot of turmoil and noise in the system. In order to get the best out of the people that are delivering YOUR innovation is to protect them from as much external nonsense as you can. Set the context for them as they need it, but don’t trouble them with every butterfly that flits by.
Another thing about these folks is that they simply like to do what they like to do. They are experts in delivering their product and they derive a lot of pleasure from doing so. It’s the content of their work that is most important. You may have to help them through any radical change in their technology ecosystem. But once you do, they will execute flawlessly.
And finally, it’s all about carbohydrates. Though your geekworker is especially fond of any food – especially carbohydrates — washing it down with caffeine is even better. A word of caution here, leaders of a certain age or of a certain nutritional inclination should be careful when breaking bread with their geek. You may choose to invoke your inner geek with green tea and complex carbohydrates instead.
Whatever you choose to do, find out what they need from you and dig deep inside to your inner geek and figure out how to do it.
Next week: Try some geeky stuff yourself
