Dear community, at the beginning of my career I always thought that technical expertise in IT was the most important thing. How could it be otherwise: I love my work with computers and am constantly busy with them.
It was only after I gained some professional experience that I realized that high technical skills are not the only factor that determines personal success or the success of a team. There is much more to it than that. But this realization had to mature slowly. After that, I needed some time (the 2010s) to find general terms for the many factors and to sort out my thoughts.
Here are my four umbrella terms that refer to areas of expertise:
- Expertise
- Technology
- Social interaction
- Organisation
Expertise
In my work context, IT is pretty much always a means to an end (practical computer science) and never an end in itself (theoretical computer science). This means that IT supports other disciplines such as logistics. This is where its added value lies. This is precisely why you have to be well-versed in the discipline you are supporting with IT. Otherwise, you simply cannot provide good support.
At the same time, the term “expertise” also refers to all the specific IT know-how. Exactly what you learn in a computer science degree, for example: data structures, algorithms, runtime, programming languages and much more.
Technology
You might think that technical expertise would also be about the specific aspects of computer science. But that’s far from the case. It’s about how well you can handle the hardware and software that’s available to you. What use is the best smartphone if you can’t answer a call because you don’t know how to do it? Exactly: nothing.
That’s why it’s so important to be able to get the most out of the hardware and software available in your everyday work. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a developer, a consultant or a secretary. Hardware and software are there to support us in our work. Who would only use 5 out of 10 available workers when renovating a house?
Social interaction
In my opinion, social skills are totally underestimated, i.e. how you behave. Especially towards other people. Sometimes consciously, often unconsciously, this has an incredible impact on success or failure. Even in our professional lives, we are still human beings, we eat lunch together, talk about problems and experiences. An incredible amount of things happen on an emotional level, whether we notice it and want it or not.
Organisation
One of my greatest and at the same time surprising discoveries about whether something is successful or not is when reliable people are involved. Reliability arises when committed and very well organized people (also well organized as part of a team) work on a topic.
well organized
I have met quite a few people during my working life. Many of them were very professionally and technically competent, and some of them were also really nice.
I have met well-organized people much less often. People who had an eye on their own issues, but also on the issues of the team they work in. But in my opinion, that is now one of the most important issues: you don’t have to be the best technician, but you have to get involved in your team, contribute what you can and thus achieve the overall goal together. After all, we work on many challenges in teams these days. Reliability through good organization and structure plays an important role. There is nothing you value more than reliable people. Then you know where you stand and can react.
For this reason, I have started to compile simple methods under the term “well organized” that work well for me and others. These methods help to achieve goals in everyday IT work. A lot of it is about communication (talking, listening, visualizing), having solutions for typical everyday challenges ready (saves time and is transparent) and much more.
This is exactly what I will be reporting more about here in the future.
So, stay tuned.
Michael