said by Nightfall:said by StepBack :said by Nightfall:This sounds like a great step up for you. I agree that you should take the initiate to document these vulnerabilities and problems. Prioritize them on the document because maybe your new IT Director will have some input on them as well. Hopefully, he will have the budget and experience to prioritize the issues and fix them. Probably, the way it looks will take a backseat to the patching, AD permissions, and infrastructure issues.
As the new network admin, just showing that these are the vulnerabilities is just half the battle. A good network admin should know the network inside out and backwards. From the switches and servers all the way to the OS of the servers and security. Then you have Visio diagrams for the network, and documentation on everything from how groups of users are setup to disaster recovery.
Either way, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. Taking some initiative is key here, but run everything by the IT Manager. It will show you are engaged.
The only person above me is the IT Director who was the previous network admin, I could never leave project prioritization to him because nothing would get completed. Any tips on how to get him step out of the day to day trenches? Or how to educate him & the rest of the guys on the team?
The more time spent thinking about this weekend it seems like a daunting task to correct all the metal flaws here...
Keep in mind that he is not doing the project, you are. He would just prioritize them. I regularly speak to the people underneath me and they bring me a list of things that need to be completed in their areas. I sit with them and prioritize those things with them based on their impact to the business.
The only way you are going to get him to step out of the day to day trenches is to make him feel like you have things covered. Do you know what the high impact issues or projects are in the network admin area? Do you have sufficient documentation? Do you have everything handled in terms of day to day operations? If you don't then he will probably see that as an issue, which is why it is important for you to show you are ready by looking at your area overall and making some recommendations on what you should be concentrating on.
These are tasks that will take months if not years to accomplish. If you look at this as an elephant, don't try to eat the whole elephant at once. You eat it a bite at a time.
When I took this job, I was involved in the day to day operations of the network for the first year after I got in here. The network admin and I worked through all the issues and now, I don't even touch the network much anymore. The key here is that he made an action plan with high priority projects, we prioritized them, and then I let him work through them.
You may not get him out of the network side entirely in less than a year, but its your job to come to him with a plan that will get him out of the network side and more into the management side.
Ok well put
hopefully it all works out. Heres a question for you, can these sorts of bad habits be corrected? The guys that are here have been following in his footsteps sort of.