Blog: William McKnight

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Management Phobia in Business Intelligence

From interviews with hundreds of BI professionals over the past year as part of my environment assessments, there are a few conclusions I can draw. One of them is that, as compared to previous years, more people don't want to be a manager and this includes managers. I suggest a variety of factors leading to this:

1. Managers have too many meetings

Self-explanatory

2. The people who work for you have higher expectations of what you need to do for them

You get to play counselor, psychologist, motivational speaker and, most definitely, personal advisor. These aspects of the job can be quite a change from the technical work.

3. Recent technology innovations provide an attractive career path on the technical side

Real-time data warehousing, EII/EAI, ERP integration, master data management, managing multi-terabytes of data, diverse and growing user communities, etc. all keep the BI technical professional out of persistent doldrums.

4. Technology changes make it seem difficult that you can get back on the technology track if you wanted to someday.

This has resulted in very careful consideration of the management track on the part of many BI professionals.

5. Long hours as in being told 55 hours per week are not enough

Self-explanatory

Management has always had its difficult challenges, but in the past those were acceptable based on the financial and career upside. However, in today's economy, with restructuring activity rampant, many of the hierarchical structures of the past, and the perceived benefits of moving into management, have been eliminated. With merger and acquisiton activity, managers now also supervise across state and country boundaries and across functions, exacerbating the stress (and lowering job security).

If you have any opinions as to whether, in your experience, this is true, please post.

Also if you have an opinion as to whether this is hurting or helping business intelligence programs, post those here as well.

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