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Making yourself capable of handling a technical management role for the first time.

David Long

CTO, CPTO, VP of Engineering at Previously at Lexipol, Ribbon, Mutualink, Lucent, AT&T

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Problem

In my first technical management role, I was brought into an organization where I did not have prior expertise or needed skills, so I had to plan a course of learning to gain both business and technical understanding. This first management job was leading a group of software developers that supported all the business functions for one of AT&T Network Systems factories. All of my technical background was in software development for telecom and embedded systems; very different than supporting accounting, purchasing, logistics, materials management, etc. Also, some of the systems were COBOL based, running on IBM mainframes, which was quite different from my C/C++/Unix background. So, not only did I need to answer the question of staying technically relevant, I needed to learn how to speak about the application areas that we supported.

Actions taken

I quickly assessed what was needed to successfully navigate this situation. After meeting with all the software developers to understand what they did and the processes they used, I tried to understand from them the business processes that they were supporting; given that each software developer was also performing the role of analyst. That helped some, but not enough. I needed to be in the "face to the customer," in this case, our customers were the managers of the various business areas. I needed more knowledge.

I enrolled in an Executive MBA program, which took two years to complete. But, while in the program, what I learned on Friday/Saturday, I put into practice on Monday. Now, an EMBA doesn't give you all the tools to actually perform all these business functions as much as it provides the understanding to work with the people that do. This was just what I needed and also served as a key to what continual learning is required in the role of being a technical leader. As the author states, "Learning and understanding what it took to serve our customers required learning enough to converse and relate to them."

As far as the technical side of the equation, I had earned the credibility of the team technically, just by the fact that I came from Bell Labs. So, my lack of business applications programming was not an impediment. Technologies and solutions in business applications were moving quickly, so staying technically relevant meant staying up to date in a broad area of computing.

Lessons learned

Within 6 months, I had learned enough from the EMBA program to effectively work with all of our customer organizations. Our organization was recognized often for the improvements that we were making to the business. A year later, I was promoted to a manufacturing CIO position supporting an entire business unit. The most important lesson here was that breadth of knowledge was more important than depth. Learning and understanding what it took to serve our customers required learning enough to converse and relate to them. The same thing held true for the team that I led. When determining what you need to learn, make certain that it is in response to the situation that you are in; the team that you are leading and the customers that you support.


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David Long

CTO, CPTO, VP of Engineering at Previously at Lexipol, Ribbon, Mutualink, Lucent, AT&T


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