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As a part of my bi-yearly review process, I do something called a "Stay Interview" as part of my employee retention approach. I learned the approach from an IT conference I attended, and purchased this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Hello-Stay-Interviews-Goodbye-Talent/dp/1626563470

As a part of this process, I begin by simply telling my people how glad I am to have them on my team, how important they are to the team, and mention something that I think that they do well. I also ask a lot of questions that give me an idea of how to motivate each individual and to make them happy in their work.

In addition to that, I hold a weekly staff meeting where I make sure to mention our accomplishments and things we did well. I find that just telling someone that you appreciate them, and recognizing that they did well goes a very long way.

I also occasionally take the team to lunch, or order in. I allow my people to use their PTO whenever they want or need to, and actually encourage people to take time off. I reward people with off-the-books time off when they've put in extra effort. I also fight hard for raises and additional benefits.

The latest round of Stay Interviews was very encouraging, my people seem happy and well adjusted. I also found a couple of places where I can improve.

Learn Finance. You don't need to know how to work in the CFO's office but you need to know how to speak the language of the people in the C suite. If you can talk to the CFO in his/ her language and justify purchases by meeting the metrics they are looking at (and not the ones you think are important) then you will go a lot further. A good book to read: Financial Intelligence: A Managers Guide

The book gives you a good foundation on understanding the numbers (Income statement, Balance sheet, Cash Flow, etc) and can help you learn the right questions to ask of your Finance group. Once you know what numbers/ metrics management is looking at then it often becomes presenting your purchases in the right way and at the right time.

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Also, to your question about spending and budgets. Just because a company is profitable does not mean that it always has the free cash flow to make a purchase at that time. Having the CFO approve purchases can be about conserving capital, conserving cash, or managing purchases to make sure the Balance sheet looks good.

Exactly. The 1:1 should be a 30 minute meeting each week and it is their guaranteed time with you. They can talk about whatever they want. Kids. Weekends. Hobbies. Nothing. Just a way to establish some relationship and I am always available for them to tell me where I can help or improve as well as their leader.

It becomes a type of safe place but it is easier to course correct a ship with small corrections than trying to pull a 90 degree turn at the last minute.

A few books I would recommend in no particular order:

• Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager
  
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
  
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
  
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
  
• Writing That Works
  
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

I work in healthcare and have had trouble trying to get department managers completely on board but I have gotten to take over a handful of things IT used to do. The way I explained it to my CEO is that data owners are responsible for the who has access to the data and how they access it. Data custodians (IT) are the ones that make sure the data is available and that it gets backed up.

IT used to be both data owners and custodians. I explained to my CEO that IT doesn't know Sally needs (or doesn't need) access to the billing department's file share. It is up to management within that department to make that determination. If it is left to IT a lot of people could end up having access to data they don't need access to. I never really came up with an analogy.

This is covered in the "Information Security Governance and Risk Management" of the CISSP exam. Shon Harris's all-in-one exam book covers it pretty well. Eric Conrad also has a study guide. It does a very good job of explaining the CISSP concepts.

I'm not sure if that is exactly what you're looking for but there it is.

You need to deal with these folks face-to-face and understand what motivates them then speak to those values and in a way that will lower emotional response, increase intellectual response, and improve commitment. Here's a good book I strongly recommend.

For instance, you could talk to the guy in the ticket above and tell him, "Hey man, it looks like your team could use some wins so upper management sees that your performance is improving. I see that your team has the expertise to do this project best, would you want take this on?"

The Phoenix Project is a great book and has some really interesting (though a bit idealistic in my opinion) theories about organization and execution. That book really jump-started my Kanban efforts. I don't think I could recommend a single book to cover everything because my current efforts have grown organically over years of trial and error and I pulled from a lot of different places to accomplish it all.

As I mentioned, I use Kanban to manage workflow and a bit of Agile/Scrum concepts for meetings. Some good resources along those lines are...

http://www.agilesysadmin.net/kanban_sysadmin

http://blog.digite.com/kanban-in-it-operations/

http://www.amazon.com/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technology-Business/dp/0984521402

You may also want to look more into retrospectives, where you look back on what happened and discuss what worked, what didn't, what you could do better, how the process can be improved, etc. But also pulling in Agile concepts of iterations so your retrospectives don't wait until the end of a 6 month project, instead you'd hold them more frequently so you can derive more value throughout the process and make frequent changes/adjustments.

First, go read The Phoenix Project. A quick read that novelizes process workflow concepts really well.

Personally, I use a Kanban board to make sure projects are moving along. In conjunction with a ticketing system (which is a great log but poor visual representation of how projects or long tasks are going) it works great and is visible enough that my CEO often walks in and takes a look at our "current status." Would be worth looking into as initial investment is low (mine is a whiteboard and some colored post it notes; more elegant and online solutions are plentiful).

This is a very practical book about how people perceive you and how you can build their trust: The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over

Yes, you'd learn it in an MBA program or by being in leadership for a while. You're correct - "how many reports" is asking how many people would report to you. "What does the org look like" is asking about the structure of the organizational hierarchy.

How many reports are pretty easy - there are direct and indirect. "5 direct" means that 5 people report directly to you. "5 direct and 20 indirect" mean that 5 people report to you, and 20 more report to those 5.

The org structure can be a bit trickier. They might draw you a rough org chart, showing where you are and who is directly above and below you. But they may also talk about the structure - flat, hierarchical, matrixed... there are a few different ways to structure people.

So yeah - there are a ton of resources, but I can't really recommend which ones are good or not... never really looked into them.

https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Day-MBA-4th-Step-Step-ebook/dp/B0078XFJQ2

https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Business-Professor-Venture-Capitalist/dp/B01G2W0FUE

Go and search on Amazon for "MBA" - there are thousands of resources.

Read this. (sorry on mobile)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0787961485/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_PzVuDbPRWQH4S

Understand the vast difference in IT culture vs the standard office culture. Respect the knowledge and experience of your key team members. Sheild them from the office politics so they can do their best work for you.

Just my $0.02

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345504194/

This is worth reading for anyone that is looking for "A Players" as a hiring manager. It's an easier to digest version of Top Grading.

Lately we have been using these when possible. Much safer for monitors as well.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00V2JGXWM/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1526417456&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=industrial+laundry+cart&dpPl=1&dpID=41uqEfMyTlL&ref=plSrch

This might be worth a read. It really opened my eyes to the fact that teams ( just like individuals) can have different levels of development and how to recognize these different stages...

http://www.amazon.com/Tribal-Leadership-Leveraging-Thriving-Organization/dp/0061251321

IT Manager's Handbook is good start.

You might want to read The Phoenix Project. It's an IT fable of a guy getting thrown into a management position in an absolute cluster... mess, and how he clawed his way out via process improvements.