Career Profile: IT Leader

Name: John Elflein Title/Employer: Most recent was Morgan Stanley Age: 57 Education: MS Tenure in IT industry: 35 years First tech job: COBOL programmer for Suburbia Fed. S&L Current role: In my prior role I was the in-house IT support for the Managed Futures business unit. This entailed business analysis, process analysis, creation of business intelligence tools, and liaison with corporate IT support. What's been your best job and why? Working at Dean Witter (prior to Morgan Stanley merger) was the best. Dean Witter was a mostly loyal, appreciative, rewarding, and respected company. There were always the quirks that are found in corporate life e.g. favoritism, cronyism, egotism, and so forth but by and large working there was enjoyable. What do you think is the number one non-IT skill IT professionals need today? IT people need more business awareness. They need to see life in the context of the business rather than technology. They forget that without the business, the technology is not needed. What do you credit your career success to (mentor, influence from colleagues, education, etc.) I mostly credit any career success to my wife, first of all, for being my driving force. After that, I would have to say my junior high school band teacher, whom I became quite close to. His motto was "If you're going to hit a wrong note, hit it hard so everyone can hear it". This of course alluded to having self confidence and faith in your own abilities. You could say that he coined the phrase "Just Do It" before Nike thought of it.

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What are the top three skills a high-level IT manager needs today?

1. Political acumen: To be effective, you have to build alliances and a network.
2. Communication: There is nothing worse than a high-level manager who can't effectively convey his thoughts. The IT manager has to be able to communicate with the user community as well as the technology community as they both speak very different languages.
3. Ability to analyze and resolve issues, technical and non-technical, quickly and effectively. This usually comes with years of experience and lots of "Been There/Done That".

What's your favorite IT resource site and why? Information Week as it always has articles on a wide spectrum of subjects and the writers/editors make the reading easy while being very informative. What is the best career advice you've ever received? Two things come to mind; first is always do your personal best and the good things will follow. Second is remember that they only want you if you have/do something they need. What's the top advice you'd give to a new IT staffer? Keep up with your craft, follow your interests (you're best at what you like to do), be eager to learn from your colleagues and develop lasting professional relationships. What is the one career decision you would change if you could? I would have left my prior employer several years ago and taken more risk. If you had the choice to jump into any other job, tech or non-tech, what would it be? Teaching on a college level. I've always wanted to do that but could never afford their salaries. Other recent articles from TechCareers Career Profile: Senior Director of Security Engineering Strategy, Microsoft Hiring Report: 4INFO Wants Skills And A Passion For Mobile Tech

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