To continue the theme (see Are you a Technical Professional? and Are you a Geek?), you can find out if you’re a IT Leader in the making by asking yourself if you exhibit three or more of the behaviors below:
- You find yourself thinking with pragmatism and not with perfectionism
- You wish COBOL.NET was THE language of choice, so you can have a half-sensible conversation with developers
- If you were to develop code, you’d do it in a text-editor like Notepad
- You spend more time typing on your Blackberry than you do on a conventional keyboard
- You only know the terms Digg-It, Twitter and Stumble-Upon in the gardening context
- You wish you had an office
- You wish you had a PA
- You’d know what to do with an office and a PA
- You only read off print-outs
- You wouldn’t be seen dead eating your lunch at your desk
- Your mobile phone is well worn and scratched, and you don’t mind
- Your network isn’t a technical thing
- Facebook? Myspace? You don’t know what these are, but you’re all over LinkedIn
- You enter phone conferences before most people have wiped the crust out of their eyes in the morning
- You enter phone conferences whilst most people are having a beer
- You have a burning desire for an office-chair offering lumber-support
- You use management speak and find it quite natural
- You are seriously considering an MBA, or already have one
- You’re one of the rare breed that actually does read minutes after a meeting
- You worry about organization structure, and plan on how to get to the top of it
- You find office politics fair sport
- You don’t carry papers into meetings
- Your work-life balance is always something to deal with tomorrow
- You check your company’s share price daily to check your net-worth
- You know what is in company announcements before they happen
- You get really p1ssed off if you don’t know what is in company announcements before they happen
- Using a photocopier is a rare event
- You don’t know what the latest version of Windows is, or really care
- You use the Help system on your home computer
- You use the term ‘computer’ and don’t feel it is vulgar
- You change your business card within 0.0001 seconds of being promoted
- You leave your laptop in your desk
- You’d never tell your peers how much you earn, but will show every other visible sign of how wealthy you are
- You worry about your golf handicap
- You think that if your presentation has a pie-chart in it, it must be good
