Wootopia.net

There’s an old workplace joke that when an employee behaves in an unusually naïve, clueless, or incompetent way, his co-workers will nod to each other and remark, “He’s management material.”

So I have a background in Computer Science, and have spent my adult working life doing tech support, sysadmin work, web development, and technology consulting. So, naturally, I work for Tech Support here at my alma mater, at a customer service desk that focuses a great deal on front-line support for students.

That’s just fine with me. Student problems tend to be interesting, I generally enjoy working with students, and the atmosphere is professional, but collegial and relaxed.

Somehow, I’ve become responsible for a lot of the supervision of our 40 or so student employees. In short, someone decided I was “management material.”

So I’m going to occasionally write short articles about some of the lessons I’ve learned in management, focusing less on “Oh wow, what a crazy situation,” but how various strategies I’ve applied to the issues have – or haven’t! – worked.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 10:52 am and is filed under Management Material. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.