Dear Bob ... I've just taken over as IT director in a medium size business (we have about 1,000 employees in all; my department has 75 of them). Things seem to be running okay, but I'm not sure, and worse, I'm not sure how to tell. While I have some management experience, I've never managed this many people before. Can you give me a few pointers so I don't accidentally step in somet Dear Bob …I’ve just taken over as IT director in a medium size business (we have about 1,000 employees in all; my department has 75 of them). Things seem to be running okay, but I’m not sure, and worse, I’m not sure how to tell.While I have some management experience, I’ve never managed this many people before. Can you give me a few pointers so I don’t accidentally step in something? – Training on the JobDear OJT …There are a lot of bits and pieces to a question like this. I could write a book about it. (Oh, I forgot … I did.) And while there are a lot of different possible starting points, I’d suggest you start with organizational listening. As a manager you could probably know what was going on in your workgroup by just talking to everyone. With 75 staff members and a thousand employees in the company, all of whom you support, you can’t. Management by walking around doesn’t scale up.So while you have a lot of issues to deal with in running a large organization, the key to staying out of trouble is developing reliable mechanisms for gathering and making sense of what’s going on in the company.One piece of the puzzle is your leadership team. The chain of command is a notoriously unreliable source of information. The only way to make it useful is to ensure everyone on it knows the best way to work with you is complete candor: You don’t shoot messengers, you shoot silencers; you don’t evaluate people not on whether they never make a mistake but for how they deal with problems when they do arise. Even with an outstanding leadership team, you need other channels besides. Hold “skip meetings,” staff meetings, and user round-tables. Conduct surveys. Take the other executives to lunch on a regular basis to get their sense of things.The concept is pretty simple: When you’re in a leadership role, ignorance is not bliss. Quite the opposite: In order to do anything else effectively, you first have to understand the situation.The concept is simple. It’s the execution that’s difficult. – Bob ——– Technology Industry