Describe your management style.
I would categorize my management style as "Success Through Empowerment". I believe that
a Manager's responsibility is to develop and communicate a long term vision that
supports company strategic objectives. Once accomplished, a good Manager will
facilitate progress, help remove obstacles and will motivate and encourage the team
to overcome challenges.
I believe that if you give team members the tools, structure and guidance to effectively
complete an assignment and meet deadlines, your projects are more likely to succeed.
In my experience, projects ultimately succeed through qualified team members and strong
yet versatile, supportive management.
What is your basic workplace philosphy? I am a disciple of Dr. W. Edwards
Demming. I have spent a lifetime finding ways to implement and perfect his 14
points into my every day work life. I believe that his principles, which were
primarily targeted towards improving manufacturing quality, can also be equally
applied to managing IT organizations, with appropriate modification. I've worked
in very small, startup organizations as well as very large, mature companies and
everything in between. I have yet to work in an environment that didn't benefit
from embracing Dr. Demming's teachings.
How do you stay current with emerging technologies? I am one who really enjoys
learning about new things. I am a learn by doing Engineer. As an example, I recently
built Zimbra, a somewhat new e-mail and collaboration suite of open source software
on an old, semi-retired server that I used to have in a colo datacenter. I decided
to run it on Centos 5.4 which is essentially a Red Hat Linux operating system that
supports virtual machines. In this way, I got to learn about and use a new suite
of products and a new operating system for a negligible cost. All of the software I
am using was free and it's running on a recycled server. My only real expense was
my time which I think was well served doing this exercise.
I'm also looking into what would be involved in becoming a digital ID certificate
authority (CA). Not that I have any desire to get into the cert business but I
do think this would be a good method to really understand encryption and to save
myself those hefty annual certificate fees as a bonus.
What sort of work would you like to do moving forward? I am always interested
in designing and building Network Operations Centers (NOC). Proactive enterprise
management and remote administration has been a strong influence for many decades.
I am always interested in working with new monitoring and management products.
I am also very interested in enterprise security related projects. Almost every
network has security vulnerabilities and infected equipment. I believe that this will
become a "bread and butter" service offering for me over the coming years.
Additionally, I still enjoy taking over a network after a key Administrator leaves
and "hold down the fort" until a qualified replacement can be recruited.
My dream job would be to have my very own enterprise of 50-200 users where I am
the primary Administrator or Manager. At a great company, working with people I like
and respect and who appreciate me. There is no substitute for having a job that you
just can't wait to get to every day.
