The three rules of management: Document, document, document

It’s a cliche, but managers love to insist that the IT staff document absolutely everything related to the job. However, it’s also a good idea for supervisors to heed their own directives, as I found out the hard way when I was the IT manager at a small company with a handful of staff.

Back when the recession first hit, we had to cut costs at the company. My boss, the CFO, and I went over everything with a fine-toothed comb to see what we could live without. Of course, it became much more difficult when we had to think about staff.

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One IT person was an excellent worker and we wanted him to stick around, though we didn’t really have the funds to maintain his position. Eventually, we came up with an offer that all of us — HR, the employee, the CFO, and my team — found agreeable. He would work for us part-time but keep his full-time benefits, thus cutting costs just enough to reach our goals but still retaining him on staff.

Given that the CFO and HR had been involved in the process, I didn’t document this agreement on my end, nor did I follow up. I assumed that the CFO would notify HR that it was finalized, and HR would process the necessary paperwork to put in the IT person’s file.

Several months passed and all was well: We were pleased to have him on staff, and he was satisfied with the arrangement, especially in a bad economy.

A few months more passed. It was obvious that the IT budget wasn’t too rosy, so I decided to leave for another job. I had a feeling the company was going to cut my position or reduce me to part-time, so rather than wait around to find out, I decided to jump ship.

Strangely enough, they didn’t eliminate my position, but the company decided to replace my former boss, the CFO, with a lower finance person — a director-level instead of a C-level position.

Six months later I got an email from this IT person at my former company. I thought he had finally decided to leave and wanted me to be a reference. Instead, he asked me if I remembered the agreement we had set up for him a while back. I said sure, why?

He told me that the new director of accounting had decided to change to a new HR system, and now his full-time benefits had disappeared. He told me that HR had nothing about the agreement we’d reached in his file.

I didn’t have any documentation, either, but I remembered sending some emails to the former CFO about it. I asked the IT person to restore my archived emails and to look back during that period.

The next day he emailed me to thank me because his full-time benefits had been restored — and he made sure HR noted the agreement in his file.

Well, I didn’t need someone to tell me I’d messed up. And, yes, I did take a moment to ponder the irony of the situation. As much as managers complain about IT staffers not following procedures, they need to follow their own directives.

Yes, they can be taught.

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