Management: Trust your Experts

I'm writing this blog with the hope that managers (present and future) looking for help doing management will find this article and apply it to their standard management principles.

I also made sure to write that opening paragraph to give the SEO a little boost regarding the topic.

The simple synopsis for those of you who don't have the time to read the entire blog is this: The specialized employees you have (especially those in tech related fields) are there because hopefully, they know what they are doing. Because of this, you should defer to them for decisions regarding technical questions within their field, rather than choose yourself. At the very least, let them present you with a narrowed list of options.

Want to hear more about the how and why? Read on.

A simple and probable scenario: You have a product that has very specific goals in development, such as being usable for a certain age group, or is expandable. You've got a staff (one to one-hundred people, it doesn't matter) who are specialists in the product's field. You yourself have experience managing said staff in developing similar products, but you have little to no recent experience in the development field. When developing the timeline and in-between goals for reaching the primary goals (such as when certain points of functionality should be reached, or what approach you should take in the manufacturing process), do you rely on your own experience and intuition, or the developers?

If you answered the former, then you need to reconsider, because there is a strong chance that development will suffer. Why?

You yourself haven't had the chance to actually learn the nuances and potential pitfalls of the development process, which should change regularly in most fields. I myself work in the web, technology, security, and newspaper industries. I have personally had the joy of seeing decisions being made that have a profound effect on the end goals (driving traffic to a website, reducing cost, building revenue, etc) without having been consulted first. Many times, in fact.

You may argue that observation of the process is enough to learn, but unless you are micromanaging it from start to finish, you will miss critical details that leave you with much less experience than the people you hired - the experts.

Real world case in point: A major website owner decides to sell front-page interstitial web ads. These will show up before any content on the website does, and requires a click-through to move on to the real main page of the site. These will load only once per day per user (through use of cookies). We'll assume the website owner is charging through the nose for this sort of ad, which is why they were so eager to allow it.

The problem with the above scenario? Aside from the experts not being consulted before the sale, there is one critical problem - this will not only annoy users, but also dramatically impact search engine optimization, because of how the ad will load in the system.

Those of us who are experts in the web industry knows that if a search engine isn't getting your perfectly crafted landing page when indexing your site, it isn't going to return as many visitors to your site for your market. That means fewer impressions, which means less potential revenue for yourself and your other advertisers.

I understand being in a leadership/managerial position is difficult. You've got to forge relationships and earn the trust of your team, exploiting that to reach an end goal. There is a reason there are so many books on the topic - there is a need for expert opinions on being a leader.

Hopefully, after reading this, you'll look to your experts for more decisions regarding your next project. Remember, you are paying them to do what they are well-trained to do - which means you shouldn't have to feign expertise to do their job for them. If they aren't able to produce results for you in critical decisions, then you should consider investing in some training, or investing in some new experts.

For those of you who believe that I'm just another young sprite with no leadership experience singing the song of the expert in the managerial field, rest at ease; I've lead a number of tech related projects and worked with teams of specialists in order to reach a goal, ranging from managing online communities to leading a class through Linux installs and WAN simulations, and am an independent new media consultant. I may not be your next CIO, but I've at least witnessed the playing field from both ends, and would like to share my personal experiences with you in order to ensure that your business gets everything done the way it should be. Plus, I read "InformationWeek", so that makes me totally awesome.

-WFL

Incompetent Competition in Web Design

That's right, I'm not even justifying this post with an image.

I find it incredibly disgusting at how the web design industry has progressed in smaller communities. I look around at my competition and find that.. well.. they aren't truly worth being called competitors.

For the sake of saving face (and not screwing myself over professionally), I will avoid linking to any said "competitors", giving any names, or affording you any specifics on who you should be avoiding if you are seeking web design services - if you are curious, you can ask.

There are a number of businesses in the area that offer "professional" web design services for a modest (or insanely high) fee. The price usually varies - I know some who charge 14-year-old-in-his-mom's-basement prices, and some who charge more than high quality contract designers who have a waiting list a mile long. Either one seems to easily be able to dupe the local shops into contracting them for services that aren't even worth their time, let alone their finances.

For instance, I know of one company (yes, an actual company) that does their web design work in MS Word.

MS WORD. Not exactly a high class design tool.

Of course, there are some who actually know a little bit about web design. They can perhaps write a little markup language, or even use tables. The sad part is, the MySpace generation has aided in creating a mass breed of such designers, affording us little choice but to grab our pitchforks as professional web designers and go on a hunt to skewer these so called designers who aren't giving the client the products they need.

The technical market is suffering in rural areas, still. Clients don't research what they can get, and it shows - the amount of poor quality websites served up by sub-standard design firms is astounding. I'm not expecting perfection, but for Pete's sake, your damned abusive nested table based layout is costing the customer money in bandwidth costs!

Just because it is perceived as working doesn't mean it works well. Besides the aforementioned bandwidth costs, the lack of accessibility across various devices and platforms means that the person who contracted the designer isn't getting a full reach for their clients. Beyond that, a lack of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) means that even fewer eyeballs will even casually stumble upon the website unless they see a physically printed product.

Why the hell are designers like this surviving? What hasn't the market demanded more?

Because nobody bothered to educate the rural market about what they can get, and nobody will.

-WFL