SPOTLIGHT: Deadly sins of IT management

Okay, so maybe you are the IT manager with a big heart. When your employees come to you and confess their mistakes, you shrug your shoulders and do not demand any payback. Or you are a tightly wound IT executive who runs a highly disciplined operation, and your employees cannot stand to work for you because you explode at every mistake. There are extremes, and, of course, there is a middle ground. 

There are many important issues to address with regards to the quality of work, managing people, the tools to use, the culture and environment that you create, and fostering a cooperative mission-oriented climate. In addition, there are many ways to achieve positive outcomes, and plenty of ways to make mistakes.

Here's a list of top IT sins in this week's InfoWorld.com. Find out where you stand, and how to make your job less stressful and more enjoyable, by creating an efficient, productive workplace.

1. Gadget lust: Don't always look for the latest processors and hardware to 'keep up with the times' without considering whether your present technology is functioning just fine?

2. Information gluttony: Too often there is a belief that sharing one's expertise is the path to job security. Some people think they look smarter by knowing things nobody else knows, but you look smarter by sharing information and teaching the people around you.

3. Careless IT: This comes in many different varieties, but sometimes the IT manager commits the sin of sloth by not doing the right things for the business.

4. In-house envy: Fiefdoms, kingdoms and silos have a tendency to develop over time as a company matures, with co-workers spending most of their time protecting their own turf and envying the status or budgets of others. The result is duplication, lack of transparency, and culture-destroying politics that can cripple an organization.

"IT people have a fundamental belief that they're not doing anything wrong," says Tony Fisher, CEO of data-quality specialists DataFlux. "That's because they lack an understanding of the business at large. You end up with an environment where the IT manager sits in his office naive and happy, thinking he's doing all the right things, reading all the right journals, and executing everything according to specs that have everything to do with technology but little to do with the business."

You could probably write your own list, too, but to see what the experts think are the worst IT manager sins, check out this InfoWorld.com article