So there I was—halfway under a desk, tracing yet another mystery Ethernet cable (that led nowhere, by the way)—when my boss walked by and hit me with a corporate phrase so vague it might as well have come from a fortune cookie:
“You need to start thinking like a manager.”
Oh really?
Buddy, I’m the only IT person here. I already think like the manager… and the help desk… and the network engineer… and sometimes even the emotional support technician for when the Wi-Fi drops during a Teams call.
But hey, let’s play along. What does thinking like a manager look like when you’re also the janitor of the server room?
Step 1: Pretend You Know What That Means
At first, I panicked. Am I not thinking like a manager? Should I be standing in front of whiteboards and throwing around phrases like “digital transformation” and “synergy”? Should I be wearing a tie while rebooting the firewall?
I Googled it:
“How to think like a manager when you are just a very tired sysadmin with a dangerously low coffee-to-blood ratio.”
Google said: “Did you mean ‘how to escape corporate life and become a barista in the woods?’”
Tempting.
Step 2: Try Wearing the Manager Hat (Over Your Sysadmin Hoodie)
Managers delegate. But in a solo IT role, delegating means writing sticky notes to yourself.
“Patch the servers Saturday night.”
—Future Me, pretending I won’t be watching Netflix and ignoring alerts until panic sets in.
Managers do strategic planning. I do panic-driven troubleshooting disguised as “agile workflows.”
Managers do performance reviews. I review the performance of my own scripts and judge myself quietly.
Step 3: Metrics, KPIs, and Other Things I Made in Excel
I started building dashboards—because managers love dashboards.
- Phishing emails blocked: 843
- Phishing emails clicked: Still Todd from accounting.
- Tickets tagged “urgent” that were not urgent: 96%
- Uptime of my sanity: Currently blinking yellow.
I even added pie charts. Because nothing says “manager” like a pie chart about Wi-Fi complaints.
Step 4: Strategy + Spilled Coffee
Eventually, I realized what “thinking like a manager” actually means in a one-person IT department:
- Planning before things break.
- Budgeting like you’re negotiating with ancient dragons.
- Documenting so Future You doesn’t scream “Who configured this?!” (Spoiler: it was You.)
- Getting buy-in for cybersecurity initiatives without sounding like a doomsday prophet.
And yes, still being able to crawl under desks when someone unplugs the router to charge their phone.
Step 5: Enlightenment (or Something Like It)
I finally got it.
Thinking like a manager doesn’t mean abandoning the tech stuff. It means balancing the firefighting with the fire prevention, even if you’re the one holding both the extinguisher and the match.
It means building systems, not just fixing them.
It means prioritizing what matters… like replacing that 8-year-old switch before it goes full “smoke monster” during a Monday board meeting.
It means leading—even if no one else is on the team but you, your coffee mug, and a whiteboard filled with half-finished VLAN diagrams.
Final Thoughts from the Server Closet
So when your boss tells you to “think like a manager,” take a deep breath. You already do. You just also happen to:
- Reset passwords.
- Fight printer demons.
- Unclog digital bottlenecks.
- Reboot your dignity every Friday at 4:55 p.m.
Because you’re not just the IT person. You’re the infrastructure, the cybersecurity, the tech therapist, and yes… the manager.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to “strategically realign” the coffee machine’s static IP address. Again.