Sadly, I am as guilty as you are. As a 53-year veteran of the IT industry, I’ve witnessed the evolution of technology, methodologies, and leadership styles. The one constant has become increasingly clear: the devastating impact of poor leadership on the mental health of IT professionals. Today, I’m here to hold up a mirror to us – the CXXs, the trainers, and the consultants who are fostering a culture of anxiety, stress, depression, burnout, and stigma – the Big 5 that are plaguing our industry.
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody, by any chance, ever observes,” said Sherlock Holmes. Well, it’s time we observe the obvious: because we (yes, I was one of all of these) are the cause of the mental health crisis in IT.
Your XLAs, SLAs, and KPIs are measuring the wrong things!
Did you know this?
- 78% of IT workers reported feeling more burned out than they did at the start of the pandemic (a 2021 survey by TechRepublic)
- 42% of tech professionals are at high risk of burnout (Yerbo’s 2022 report)
- The IT industry has a turnover rate of 13.2%, higher than most other industries (LinkedIn’s 2018 Job Switchers Report)
- 28% of tech leaders reported a mental health decline in their teams due to the pandemic (Harvey Nash Group’s 2021 survey)
- The World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy £1 trillion annually in lost productivity.
Do we know what portion of the above occurs in your organization or the organizations of your most important suppliers?
Your metrics are not simply numbers but instead should be a sobering indication of the impact of our leadership and influence.
Let’s look at the Big 5: anxiety, stress, depression, burnout, and their leader Stigma.
1. The mental health pressure cooker
We’ve created an environment where the pressure never lets up. Constant deadlines, ever-changing priorities, and the relentless push for innovation have turned IT departments into pressure cookers. Agile and DevOps implementations, meant to improve efficiency, have often become tools for squeezing every drop of productivity from programs, projects, development, operations, suppliers, and support teams.
When was the last time we walked through our IT department and noticed the dark circles under our staff’s eyes, hunched shoulders, and forced smiles? You missed the weight of our expectations, potentially crushing the life out of our teams.
The same is true for our users and customers. What are they experiencing as we deploy “beneficial features” that sometimes break and cause chaos, like missed flights or doctor’s appointments?
2. Attitude + behaviour = culture (stigma)
“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me,” said Batman. Well, we’ve defined a culture where mental health struggles are weaknesses. Our rhetoric of “high performance,” “be always on,” and “if you can’t hack it, then leave IT” has created a stigma about mental health.
A 2022 survey by Mind Share Partners discovered that 84% of respondents reported one workplace factor that negatively impacted their mental health. How often do we allow honest mental health discussions in meetings from the boardroom to the team? How frequently do we prioritise hitting targets over employee well-being?
As a leader, no matter where in your organisation, lead others to have certain beliefs and attitudes. In other words, your actions cause others to mirror you! If you disregard mental health, then that’s the stigma of your business.
Our inaction on toxic behaviours, our reward for unhealthy work habits, and our failure to address systemic issues have created a culture where stress is normalised and burnout a badge of honour. The Stack Overflow 2021 Developer Survey found that 15% of developers have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and 17% with mood and emotional disorders.
3. Mental health? It’s not on my dashboard (did you ask?)
Think about the following examples:
- I walked into a program center where a large Excel plan showed every project underway with status by design, build, test, customer test, deployment, etc. It showed a lot of red, but people were rapidly replacing the red dots with green. Why? Because senior management was visiting, and after they had left, the red would go back.
- We calculated the amount of money we would save if we stopped creating monthly reports after realizing we were trying to be Agile or DevOps (multiple deploys a week) but making decisions once a month. Think about it. Eleven times a year, we, as leaders, get involved in our daily business!
- A customer I was coaching had 90+% of their calendar in “accepted” meetings. His office was full of unread reports. I took him on a walk around his IT teams and then into the bank areas, as IT is everywhere.
The copious notes he made showed he learned more in an hour than he did in meetings. Guess what they did!
Our service desk knows the truth – the good and the bad – because they deal with it daily. Even the bots know. Consider that the lowest-paid person in IT often knows more about the truth than we do. When was the last time we spent an hour with them?
We may have unintentionally isolated ourselves, relying on sanitized reports and KPIs that don’t reflect reality. This disconnect can breed resentment, depression, anxiety, and unseen burnout.
4. The shiny thing chase
Please read these blogs, commencing with Paul Wilkinson and his Shiny Things. It struck me that after 53 years in IT, I still love and want the next shiny thing. IT service management (ITSM), Agile, DevOps, or whatever framework we follow all have people, processes, and technology as a premise. In this order.
But why do we instead coach, consult, or lead with technology (after all, we sometimes falsely believe it will save us money), then fix process (if we could only make up our minds which one), and then people (who are now confused as to what to do or learn or even what it is leaders want)?
I’m not being cynical. Look at the news stories. The shiny thing chase allows the Big 5 to permeate and potentially destroy our efforts and staff.
The defense of having wellness programs, mental health days, or tools to make us more productive and save money is false.
Let’s create a sustainable environment for better mental health
The steps I outline in the rest of this article are challenging, not quick or inexpensive. However, over time, you can expect a lower staff turnover, more productive individuals, suppliers who understand the goals and want to contribute, and a leadership team that can attest daily that the organization has delivered towards a desired goal.
1. Embrace transparency and collaboration
Implement Obeya rooms in your organization. These “big rooms” should be physical or virtual spaces where all relevant information about projects, processes, and people is visually and honestly displayed. Make these spaces the heart of your decision-making process.
Invite team members from all levels to contribute and participate. Invite the rest of your organization and suppliers to come to the Obeya. Consider making it a mandate that if it’s not in the Obeya, it’s not being done (period).
When I implemented this as a CIO, the transformation was staggering. Suddenly, everyone could see the big picture, understand their role, and feel empowered to contribute ideas.
It broke down silos and fostered a sense of shared purpose. It created a culture of discussion across the organization by highlighting issues. It turned program leaders or managers into problem-solvers and obstacle removers.
2. Adopt the catch-ball process
Start using the catch-ball process for strategy deployment. This back-and-forth communication method ensures that goals and plans are not just dictated from the top but refined and made realistic through input from all levels. In my experience, this practice revealed numerous issues hidden by traditional top-down management. It gave voice to concerns and ideas that dramatically improved our strategic planning.
3. Implement Kanban or Value Stream Management to visualize workflow
Kanban boards or Value Stream Management maps are visual tools for indicating the flow of work and areas for improvement or blockages. They are best learned by using Post-it notes on a big wall. After a while, you go high-tech, bringing work ideas and flow to all parts of the business, including suppliers. Amazingly, we discovered that our over-engineered approval process was the number one obstacle to flow, timeliness, and success.
4. Lead by example with mental health
Start talking openly about mental health. Share your struggles and clearly show that obtaining help is a sign of strength, not weakness. Regularly check in with your teams about their mental well-being, not just their project status. Add visual cues to reports or boards highlighting Big 5 concerns, and benefit from your IT tools’ ability to issue alerts about overwork, lack of timely response, continued mistakes, tardiness or sickness, and other Big 5 warnings.
When I started doing this, a dam broke. People felt free to speak up about their challenges, and we began addressing issues before they became or caused a crisis. My peers began to share their concerns and feelings so that the organization started healing.
Sounds warm and fuzzy? Perhaps! But it saved a ton of money while our programs hit targets more regularly and customer/staff experience and satisfaction was over 95%.
Remember, our role as leaders is not to have all the answers but to create an environment where our teams can thrive and find the answers together. As we implement these changes, we’ll likely face resistance. Change is uncomfortable, especially when it requires admitting fault.
5. Redefine success
Stop measuring success solely by output or financial metrics. Start including employee well-being, sustainable pace, and the long-term health of your teams in your definitions.
People are less anxious or stressed if they understand what good looks like and how they contribute. Depression lessens as problems are moved or work redefined with understandable and agreed goals. Burnout goes away because teams appreciate and can plan what has to happen in a culture of collaboration and cooperation. Stigma no longer exists as we all live for a new mantra: what problems have we discovered today that will stop us from helping staff or customers tomorrow?
Let’s make that part of tomorrow’s work to fix this issue.
6. Invest in proper training and support
Ensure your ITSM, Agile, and DevOps implementations are based on sound training and support. These frameworks can be powerful, but they require a shift in mindset and culture, not just processes. Invest the time and resources to do it right. By adding mental health training, and visual alerts triggered by metrics looking for the Big 5, your “best practices” will ensure that your work environment is better and safer.
Combat the Big 5 mental health factors
The time for change is now. As leaders in the IT industry, we have the power and responsibility to transform our organisations from pressure cookers of stress and burnout into collaborative, innovative environments where people feel valued and supported.
I challenge you to commit to at least three actions from the list above within 30 days. Document your progress, share your experiences with your peers, and be prepared to discuss the outcomes at your next board meeting or industry conference.
Remember, this isn’t just about improving productivity or reducing costs – though those will undoubtedly follow. The defeat of the Big 5 is about fulfilling our duty of care to our teams, fostering innovation through psychological safety, and, ultimately, creating a more sustainable and humane IT industry.
We have a choice. Will we continue to contribute to the problem or step up and lead the change?
Notes: This blog was written with the aid of Clause.ai. The author performed all the research.
I am an IT veteran and not a mental health worker. My concern is from a leadership perspective. As I am retired, this is my effort to help protect the industry I love.
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Daniel Breston
Daniel Breston is a 50+ year veteran of IT, ex-CIO and principle consultant, multiple framework trainer, blogger, and speaker. Daniel is on the board of itSMF UK and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. Daniel may be retired, but he will help an organization if requested. Not full-time, but hey!
