Whether coming or going, it seems that no manager can make it from the front door of the building to their own office without being bombarded with a series of questions and demands on their time. It is a simple fact of life for most location managers that their work day will be spent orchestrating a simultaneous series of tasks. They were hired, after all, on the strength of their multitasking abilities, right?
Multitasking, however, is not the be all and end all of a manager’s competencies. Certainly, the ability to handle multiple tasks is necessary but, in the process, certain tasks are invariably performed poorly, haphazardly or not at all. There is another school of thought that believes that managers should be given the tools to effectively place tasks on hold while they deal with other more pressing issues.
Aside from the costly solution of hiring a full time assistant, there are other, more affordable, tools such as automated solutions that can help managers start, implement and monitor many of their regular tasks. In particular, a Human Resource Information System is one of the most useful of these tools. In addition to handling many of the mundane details of timekeeping and payroll, they can also facilitate many of the performance management functions such as hiring, training and termination.
Being a sysadmin (and sometimes classified as a b@$t@rd one at that), I have to disagree with you, but I can see your point of view since you mentioned managers and consultants. Once you let someone else manage your data, then yes you are giving up control.You also have it wrong – the time consuming tasks are the users. If you don’t want to maintain servers, the you should become a trainer and leave the ‘hard’ stuff to the rest of us. Our usefulness has not waned, and when the fit hits the shan, we’re the first one everybody runs to saying they can’t get their e-mail/files/whatever.IT managers should never be let near the servers anyway, and then, at the end run of a network cable and heavily supervised.