I’ve met a couple of people recently who combine well the generalist and specialist functions in IT management. It’s an executive level skill.

What I mean by this is, they can take a 30,000 foot view of a business, find the problem areas, deep dive into one of those areas, set up the systems and people to fix the problems, and then cruise back up to 30,000 feet to find the next problem.

I’ve got a guy who does this for MSP’s and another one with ISP’s and related tech companies.

I say it’s an executive level skill because the managers that specialise in project management, change management or service management for example typically are too far down in the weeds to be able to take a holistic business view of problems. Their skills are too specialised to be able to fix different problems in different parts of the business.

So if you’ve got a generalist skillset that lends itself to this kind of executive function, then make sure you show both the general role you play and also the role you play when you deep dive down to help fix business problems. And always emphasize the business problem and solution more than the tech that you used.

The real skill is knowing what questions to ask and how to develop systems and people to fix problems rather than just getting your hands dirty yourself such that every problem is reliant on you being there all the time. That’s not a solution that’s just building a solution that’s reliant on one person. No redundancy. RAID 0. (If you know, you know)

Reach out if I can help with shaping your IT career in Australia. I’m also happy to speak to anyone looking for recruitment advice.