Leader Profile #1

Peter Linn
MBA 8995
Published in
3 min readDec 4, 2016

Informational interviews are a great way to expand your personal network and share ideas with others. For my first interview I chose to go outside my particular business area and speak with someone who manages people in a completely different environment.

1. What company do you work for and what is your position?

PTC, I’m the Global Service Desk Manager

2. What are/were some of your greatest successes as a leader?

I started my team, I was the lead that hired my current team. I did all the interviewing and training to start a whole new Service Desk division.

3. What are the duties/responsibilities of your job?

I manage 20 analysts to make sure we’re meeting our Service Level Agreements on resolving user issues. I also make sure that for any new applications that are setup and rolled out we have the proper documentation to support it and also ensure the team is fully trained. I also ensure we’re offering 24x7x365 support worldwide.

4. What kinds of problems do you deal with?

I deal with system outages as well as elevated issues that might result in the gathering of several groups and management to resolve a large issue. I’m also involved in large projects as anything new effects my team due to users calling in for support.

5. What part of your job do you find personally most satisfying? Challenging?

I enjoy helping people the most. Having someone that can’t get something resolved on their own or are frustrated because it’s just not working how they thought it would and us giving them the tools to resolve it. Most challenging is the rate at which things change. One minute it can be minor issues that will grow in to a large high pressure outage that could result in a large volume of calls to my team.

6. What is your professional background?

I’m in Information Systems, I’ve been in support roles and now management. I’ve gotten to see both sides of IT.

7. Which past jobs have been most helpful in getting you to this point in your career?

I think working at Target HQ in a call center role. It’s what gave me the experience to be able to move into other support roles throughout my career.

8. What skills or talents are essential to being effective in your job?

You have to be a multi-tasker and wear many hats to make sure your team is covered. Having an intimate knowledge of the things you support helps you help your team as well.

9. How would you describe yourself as a leader?

I’m a fair leader, I expect things to be done correctly but I also teach the right way to do things and to not cut corners.

10. Could you tell me a story about a challenge you faced as a leader? How did you solve it? How did it change you?

There was a multi-day outage that involved myself as being the main leader in communicating the issue to leadership. I was the lead at getting the proper groups together to resolve the issue.

11. Could you tell me a story about a time you needed to deal with a difficult person or have a difficult conversation?

There was an analyst that continued to not follow processes that were setup for the group that could result in financial loss for the company. I ended up having to put them on a performance plan to make sure he was following the right process. After working with him on several improvements he continued to fail, which led to his termination.

12. How do you balance the technical parts of the job with the people management part?

With the role I’m in you need to do both at the same time. You have to be able to teach and learn the technical part but you also have to do the people management side to make sure they understand that technical side to better assist users.

This interview confirmed my theory that there are many parts of management that are consistent regardless of what you are managing. People are really at the center of it, and you have to have or gain some measure of technical expertise in whatever you are managing to help the people you manage be more effective on your team.

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