Magnet Virtual Summit // I Run A Digital Forensics Unit And I Am A Terrible Manager

I am the Director of the St. Joseph County, IN Cyber Crimes Unit. The unit consists of ten college students, one high school student, and myself. We’ve all heard the horror stories about this generation of workers, which currently accounts for over 50% of the workforce. Among other things, they are entitled, lazy, unmotivated, disloyal, and selfish. Combine that with the fact that I am a terrible manager and it sounds like a recipe for disaster. But it hasn’t been.

The unit has been successful beyond imagination. We analyze over 500 devices a year. Our case backlog is zero cases. Our turnaround time is routinely same day. This talk will discuss a new paradigm in the workforce and our forensics lab. When I became the Cyber Crimes Director, I had no formal training or experience as a manager. So I bucked the convention wisdom of management and decided not to manage at all.

Instead, I took the approach of being a leader. What I’ve learned through leadership is that if you take care of the people taking care of the work, the people taking care of the work will excel beyond expectations. This simple concept that you manage things, but you lead people, will be discussed. Lessons from this talk can be applied by anyone in any industry to usher in a new area of the end of management and a focus on leadership at every level.