A lot of the content on the site so far and basically all the content in TBM forums is focused on the Financial aspects of the job. While you are expected to have a mastery of this area, this doesn’t represent the whole job. I should say, you hope this doesn’t represent the whole job. The basic financials will get you in the door and earn you a paycheck, but everything else will be what drives your career. Let’s take a look.
Even if we start at financials, the numbers are still just the start. Ensuring that the numbers are accurate and timely is just the basic expectation. There is no gold star here. Understanding the numbers as if they were your personal financials, is the same. What provides value to the company, your boss, and your stakeholders are the recommendations you make off the back of those numbers. You need to provide a story and a prospective they can’t come up with themselves. Otherwise you are just a numbers monkey. Don’t get me wrong, every firms needs these folks, but their careers don’t have nearly the same ceiling as the people that are able to give insight and draft a strategy. We’ll discuss those strategies in other posts.
On a day to day basis, you should be in charge of the HR happenings of the org. By this, I don’t mean HR reporting. I mean approving hires and enforcing the hiring philosophy of the unit. Are you trying to increase a junior staff? The COO should be driving a grad program. Are you trying to upscale your current staff? You should be working with training partners. Are a million vendors trying to get in the door to meet the CIO? You should have the pulse of the market and meet with them proactively to see who you can partner with to achieve goals. I think you get the point by now.
Project management is also the realm of the COO. In this capacity you should drive standards and understand the current status of all important programs. Yes, you should report on them, but more importantly you need to know the trouble spots and how the org need to react to them. You should have PM standards and refine them over time as standards in the market change. If you haven’t taken PM training or refreshed your skills, you are behind.
Understand the business strategy and act on it. This is the most important part of the job. Once you have a firm grasp on this, you will be able to liaise with the business and speak their language. You will be able to see IT through their eyes. Suddenly, your teams weaknesses will be glaring. You may now be in a position to show value in previously ignored applications.
You need to understand the compliance or regulatory aspects of your technology/business. Am I expecting you to be an expert? Of course you aren’t a compliance professional, but that shouldn’t stop you from digging in here. You can’t propose ideas unless you know that they are feasible for the unit.
So what else? The “what else” is what separates you from the other people that want your job. My philosophy is that the COO/Business Manager should be an extension of the CIO. You should be able to fill in and drive the CIO’s perspective in all forms of the role. Board meeting? Yes. Meeting with the head of the business? Yes. You shouldn’t be sitting silently in the room. You should be a vocal part of the technology management team. If you can make inroads here, your career will take off.