I had a very interesting conversation recently with a good friend of mine. She’s at the top of her game as a first class enterprise DBA in a major medical institution. She was interested in my career advice because she’d recently received an unsolicited invitation for a higher paying job in the business intelligence (BI) field. While I won’t talk much more about the specifics of that conversation, it’s not a unique conversation. In fact, I gave an interview to SearchSQLServer.com a while back about how DBA career paths are more and more leading into an even better paying career in business intelligence. Check out the interview HERE.
Many thanks to Microsoft SQL Server MVP Andy Leonard (blog | twitter) for conducting a series of interviews of prominent SQL Server types, including me. The interview found here.
SSWUG.ORG’s virtual webcasts will prepare the “Accidental DBA” for patterns and practices they will experience in their role as a database administrator. I will provide easy-to-understand insights and realistic examples for professionals who have not had any formal DBA training. By the end of our four-part series, you should have the information needed to get up to speed on database planning, administration and performance tuning basics.
Session Descriptions
In the first session, you will see what is needed to fulfill the role of a (Database Administrator) DBA by learning more about what is typically expected of administrators and where the bulk of the work is done. Regardless if you are a draftee or volunteer to the position, the information applies to anybody wanting to better understand and fully own their title.
Over the course of the second session, you will find out why it is important to grasp some of the tips and tricks that DBAs have practiced for many years. I will emphasize about the need for documentation, testing, automation, sharing experiences and continuing your education.
During the third session, you will understand the reasons why the DBA is the sheriff in town! That’s why it’s important to know what you’re dealing with in your departments and inside your databases. I will explain how to inventory, determine what is not your responsibility, talk to your stakeholders, learn the business cycles and tackle important tasks.
The fourth and final session will emphasize the four essential skills needed to survive and excel in your database administration position – Communication, Troubleshooting, Benchmarking and Automation. I will explain how to leverage these abilities toward increased job security and professional successes.
I’ve always appreciated how Andy Warren (blog| twitter) operates in the most transparent manner, especially as it relates to his role as a director for the Professional Association for SQL Server. For example, Andy’s latest blog post about prepping for the SQLRally, to kick off in less than 30 days, is insightful and gives you a good idea of the sort of work a strong director for PASS needs to put in. I also enjoy how Andy more or less thinks out loud and offers you the chance to provide your input. In that latest blog post, he was mulling different after hours entertainment options, giving you a chance to pipe up with your opinion if you had one.
Learn from My Mistakes
Times running out for the early registration discount. Save $50 by registering before the end of the week! And while you’re at it, register for my full day, pre-conference seminar on learning leadership and management skills especially tailored for the IT professional. Here’s a quick run-down of the topics we’ll cover in my pre-con:
Earning the respect of your team
A deep understand of effectively motivating technology professionals
Specific skills to lead database professionals competently that broadly fall into the categories of:
Coaching team members to effectively meet goals and deadlines
Facilitating change and navigating organizational disruptions
Promoting communication within the team and with management
Keeping teams and projects on task and within scope
Dealing with difficult team members
Practicing good team time management techniques
Read all about the goals of the session here. If you’re coming to my session, I’d love to hear your thoughts ahead of time about challenges you’re facing!
Personal Experience, Personnel Experience
Also, just a word about my bona fides. I’ve had a lot of leadership and management training over the years, but like many professionals I consider my on-the-job experiences to be the most valuable.
On the education side of the equation, I received a bachelor’s degree in the school of management back in the 1980′s. I’ve also gone through the Center for Creative Leadership‘s leadership training curriculum, the Blessing and White Management Training curriculum, and SmithBucklin’s not-for-profit governance and organizational strategy training curriculum. On the experience side of the equation, I led small dev and admin teams of 3-7 people starting way back in the early 1990′s. In the late 1990′s, I started taking a more strategic direction with my skills as the manager of information architecture at the firm where I worked as well as taking a role as one of the founding directors of PASS. In the early 2000′s, I joined Quest Software as our initial SQL Server product architect and spent several years leading the team to a over 50 individuals in a half dozen teams in as many disparate locations around the world.
A Few Words About Community from SQLBits8
The more I go, the more reasons I find to go back to the SQLBits conferences held around the UK. The starting image isn’t very flattering, but here’s a fun little interview put together by Andrew Fryer of Microsoft:
Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) and I did an interview with TechTarget’s Brendan Cournoyer at last summer’s Tech-Ed, which as turned into a podcast titled “Cloud efforts advance, SQL Server evolves.” The podcast covers all the major trends at the conference (like BI), virtualization features in Quest’s products (like Spotlight), Brent’s new book and MCM certification, and more.
Sometimes I’m timely in getting the news out on useful resources. And, other times, I’m a bit slower on the draw. As I told friends back at New Year’s Day, “As an official member of the Procrastinators Club, welcome to 2008!” On the other hand, it’s always good to remind folks of great resources that are still available and on the shelf. Why? Well, the Internet hits us with such a deluge of constantly new material, that we often forget about the old(ish) stuff that’s still really useful.
Darth Doofus, Emporer Palpatine, and Darth Goofus
Quest vConference for SQL Server
One of the most popular teaching sessions I ever engaged in was the Quest vConferences for SQL Server in 2010, with my good friends Buck Woody (blog | twitter) and Brent Ozar (blog | twitter).
These are evergreen favorites for their strong technical content and, perhaps, an outpouring of Brent’s faux chest hair in the latter part of the training events. Go to this URL for the code samples, download the slides, and to rate the presentation: http://questkb.com/live and or http://www.vconferenceonline.com/shows/spring10/quest/conference/ondemand.asp. You can also get the full events shipped for free anywhere in North America on a single DVD.
24 Hours of PASS Celebrates Women in Technology
Kalen Delaney, author and expert, and one of the initiators of WiT within PASS
It’s always a big thrill for me when a successful initiative launched by PASS goes viral. One such example is the 24Hours of PASS. (See last year’s webcasts at http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/2010/). I now see other industry trade groups and technology user groups launching their own 24 Hours type webcast marathons. Kudos – PASS folks thought of it first! (I’d give proper credit, if I could only remember who thought of it. Rick Heiges (blog | twitter), I think).
This year, 24 Hours of PASS is gearing up for an exceptional lineup of SQL Server and BI experts in 24 one-hour technical webcasts. This free training event takes place over two 12-hour days March 15-16, with each day beginning at 12:00 GMT (UTC). Click here to get registered: http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/Spring2011/. And in celebration of Women in Technology, PASS is hosting an all female line-up of speakers.
This is another area in which PASS has prompted many emulators. My memory of the details grow dim, since this was almost ten years ago, but I believe it was then PASS director Kalen Delaney (blog | twitter) and Microsoft liaison to the board Jacqueline Borges who put forward the idea of hosting a special Women in Technology luncheon. Since that time, WiT has gone on to be one of the best parts about the big PASS Summit and something widely emulated by other professional and trade associations.
Microsoft Thrive – Career Planning Insights
I was honored to be a featured speaker on the Microsoft Thrive website about this time last year. What’s Thrive? It’s a website put together by Microsoft that helps you plan out your career. It has certification and learning resources, career paths, and traditional learning patterns and practices. In other words, it tells you what you need to know to qualify for various kinds of it jobs and then gives you links to dive deeper. Check it out!
In this vblog entry on www.SQLServerPedia.com shows SQL Server expert Kevin Kline discussing his views on how to be both efficient and effective in your day to day and career – aimed at the SQL Server professional, but good for anyone.
I’m frequently asked the following paraphrased question:
I’d been happily plugging away in my job as a {DBA/Dev/Terminator/Warp Drive Engineer} for several years, when I applied for the manager position. I was surprised and thrilled when I got the job! But now that I’ve been in the job for a while, I find that no one on the team is thrilled with me. I know that I made a lot of changes. But they were all for the good of the team. What should I do to reconnect with my team and rebuild my friendships?
A common theme in this series, “Plays Well With Others”, is that the skills responsible for your success as a database professional have little in common with success as a leader and manager. And this scenario is a classic example. It’s especially important to our situation because the solution to this problem is entirely people-oriented and has nothing to do with all those great SQL Server skills you’ve developed over the years.
It's not always comedy
First of all, if you haven’t already, avail yourself of the excellent and time-tested Blanchard’s Leadership and the One Minute Manager as well as The One Minute Manager, both by Kenneth Blanchard. Management and leadership books churn through the bookstores as quickly late night talk shows on NBC have lately. But this book has proven its worth over the years and its advice still holds up well.
Next, recognize that most management hassles can be defeated or at least deflated by publicly getting in front of them. In a sense, the best way to solve this kind of problem is a bit of proactive damage control. So instead of launching into a bunch of new initiatives and changes for the team (especially the kind that reduce a former teammates’ power or privilege), announce that you’re considering a bunch of changes. You don’t have to be specific about your plans, but don’t be intentionally vague or evasive either. Further explain that some of the changes may be uncomfortable, but you’re convinced they’ll make the team much more productive and return greater value to the enterprise.
Ask everyone on the team for input and ideas of their own within the next X number of weeks while you formulate your plans. It’s very possible that you might 1) get ideas from team members that exactly matches what you’d planned to do, and 2) get new ideas you never thought of but would like to add to the mix or even put higher in priority. Be sure to thank everyone who steps up to the conversation (or email thread).
Now, it’s time to book some one-on-one time across the team and have the “tough talks” well in advance and in private with those who might be on the losing end of your changes. Also, invite suggestions about how to best go forward. You might be surprised by their team spirit. By treating everyone with empathy and dignity, you might turn one of these potential grumblers into a reliable “wingman”. On the other hand, arguments are quite likely so explain that the changes are non-negotiable, but reiterate their contribution and value to the team.
By handling this situation with foresight, you send several messages. The first and strongest message is that you are the leader. This might not be comfortable for your friends or even to you. But it’s extremely important to establish this role early on. And by handling the situation with dignity, you demonstrate that you have credibility, which makes strengthens you in a sort of positive-feedback loop.
If it’s too late to establish your “street cred” and you’ve already fumbled the early stages of the transition to leadership, you can still recover. But as the old saying goes, an ounce of protection is worth a pound of prevention. Usually in a situation like this, you should implement a goal-setting and planning session with the entire team. Explain that the objective is to collaboratively define the goals and objectives of the team and to adjust team responsibilities, processes, and duties to best accomplish those goals. Personally, you should remember the purpose of the meeting is, primarily, to get everyone on the team knows buy-in to your vision of “success” for the team and, secondarily, firmly establish your position as leader. It might take as much as half a day to hammer this down.
Prepare ahead of time. Make sure that your changes mesh with management’s goals for your team. Ensure that you and YOUR boss are on the same page about what characteristics would mark a team as “successful”. If you have some extremely strong willed team members or are expecting outright conflict, you may need to conduct your goal-setting session as a one-on-one series of meetings rather than a single meeting for the entire team. Schedule a conference room (with a white board) and appoint an official scribe to record the details of the meeting. Encourage a lot of brainstorming during the meeting. Make sure to discuss these topics:
What are we here for? A comprehensive list of team goals that characterize the team as “successful”. Be sure to project top management’s view of success to the team since you might be the only one who fully understands what management expects, plus you can contradict any false notions held by team members.
What do we do daily? The bulk of daily duties and processes performed by the team (before your changes) put in place to try to meet the goals in topic 1.
What could we do better? List any changes you put in place, as well as solicit ideas from the team. Accommodate good ideas from the team, but not at the expense of meeting the enterprise goals. Explain to the team that the goals of topic 1, as well as duties and processes of topic 2, are a sort of “contract” with the enterprise. These are the things that the enterprise uses to evaluate whether you’re all successful or not.
What did we decide? Explain that, as the leader, you’re interested in maximizing the contribution of the entire team. This might mean that the best solutions for the team are not always what each individual prefers. Reinforce that everyone on the team has part-ownership in the team contract. Express confidence in the team that they can make the changes especially effect and thank each one for their contribution and efforts.
At the conclusion of the meeting, you should now have buy-in from everyone on the team and a strong consensus on expectations. Going forward, you can use the “contract” agreed to by you and your team as the basis for evaluating performance and, if needed, for correcting underperformance.
So, after all of that, does that mean you’re still the buddy of the guy in the cube next to you? Chances are good that you and your cube-mates can stay buddies, if that’s your main goal. Just be mindful that most peer-to-peer relationships do change when one of the peers is promoted to be the boss of the other. However, you can avoid these relationship issues by clearly and explicitly defining everyone’s role and then getting explicit, verbal (or written) confirmation that you and your workmates are in agreement.
