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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.

A lot of the stuff you reference in the first three paragraphs are basically project/milestone dependencies. They are required to start the project or meet the milestone. Those should be identified by the PM but are commonly overlooked so take advantage that you know about the project and spend some time talking with them about expected needs and results. Find the PM, meet with them and talk through their needs "just to make sure you have everything in place".

The most important thing about being a manager is communication and management of the people not the things. Setup a 1 on 1 session with each of your SAs and go through their laundry list. What are they working on now? What will be they working on the next 90 days? What do they have on deck for next year? What would they like to be working on next year? What do we need to fix? What will it take to fix it? Is it something we can plan for now or do we need get budget for it? If so, how much?

After you meet with each of your SAs document the due dates and milestones somewhere visible. A shared calendar. A whiteboard. Something. Let them see it. Review it in every 1-1 just so it is not a mystery as to what is coming.

Outside the 1-1 sessions I use a high level calendar that covers the next 90 days that we review in every staff meeting. How has what milestones/project tasks due and when. This gives the team a high level view of their peers workload. Staff meetings are bi-weekly and agendas are posted the night before for everyone to review. We get in and out of them in 45 minutes.

In addition to Phoenix Project check out this book - Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager. It has focus on Software Devs but a lot of the practices apply across the board. Very easy and amusing read.

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.

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

7 habits is a good book.
Also read Crucial Conversations

Crucial Conversations

IT Manager's Handbook is good start.

> Also, do you have any books on how to be a sysadmin? I'm wanting to start become one, but have no idea where to start.

The Practice of System and Network Administration. There appears to be a new edition coming out soon, but I found this one to be very good even though it's 10 years old.

As far as recommended reading goes I would have a look at the practice of system and network administration (https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539629401&sr=8-1&keywords=practice+of+network+and+system) and The phoenix project. As far as technical courses, I'm assuming your role will be mostly strategic and managerial (unlike some of us in smaller companies where the IT Manager is also expected to be a technical lead) I would focus on the managerial side and surround yourself with technical experts.

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.

I'll add:

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Without-ebook/dp/B0051SDM5Q

https://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-Matters/dp/0143118447

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1259644901

https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Management-Information-Services-Planning/dp/0851423469

Also read this book

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321919165/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awdb_t1_.OHYDb49VR92P

Don’t have much time to post, but will point you in this direction: Incident Management for Operations https://www.amazon.com/dp/1491917628/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_.gfTAbR9C2X02

"Get Out Of IT While You Can"

https://www.amazon.com/Get-Out-I-T-While-Can/dp/0595413579

That's the paperback version, I have it on Kindle so there's an e-book version out there somewhere.

Umm.. It's a framework.

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This is the book you're looking for.

https://www.amazon.com/Visible-Ops-Handbook-Implementing-Practical/dp/0975568612

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Check out The Visible Ops Handbook

It describes a dead simple 'catch and release' program.

Make a spreadsheet, pick a couple of key details that apply to all assets (name, model, serial, location). Start capturing things. Make a google form for it if you want, and send a tech to the server room with the form up on a laptop to capture everything.

Worry about organizing and displaying this information later, just get all of your assets identified first. Any specialty software worth it's salt will have an import function.