How To Talk Like a CIO

itwbennett writes "Today's CIOs speak business-buzzwords as a second language. And there's a good reason for that. There is a trend among CIOs to distance themselves from being regarded as technologists and to put themselves forward as business strategists. It boils down to one simple rule: Just as you should never be the first to mention compensation in the interview process, you should never be the first to break out the tech jargon in a business setting."

Comments

Easy

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Just memorise all these and mix them up as you see fit:

http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html

Re:Easy

[phantomfive]

Believe it or not, that's the opposite of what the summary says.

Re:Easy

[Cryacin]

Bingo.

Re:Easy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Believe it or not, that's the opposite of what the summary says.

No it's not. The summary (and the article, which is essentially the same fluff as the summary repeated several times--I RTFA'd so you don't have to) says to avoid technical jargon, which has actual meaning and is therefore terrifying to people who want to be executives. The bullshit list is business jargon, which is inherently meaningless and is therefore very useful to C*Os and those who like to imagine themselves in such positions.

Re:Easy

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Bingo.

Re:Easy

[girlintraining]

Just memorise all these and mix them up as you see fit:

I tried that, but apparently they're better at it than I am... my proposal got rejected for not supporting the datamatrix foo buffer 2.0 cloud feature-rich zero-management extranet interface. The work order was to get a replacement power cord... the cleaning people let a vaccum cleaner chew on the last one...

Re:Easy

[DragonWriter]

The summary (and the article, which is essentially the same fluff as the summary repeated several times--I RTFA'd so you don't have to) says to avoid technical jargon, which has actual meaning and is therefore terrifying to people who want to be executives

It says to avoid technical jargon, but not because it "has actual meaning". In fact, the advice it gives is just a specific application of the most basic communication advice ever, that is, "know your audience, and address what has meaning and relevance to them". Business executives don't care about the details of technology, they care about the whether and how that technology can deliver value in the context of their business problems. This isn't avoiding real meaning, its addressing relevant meaning.

If you didn't get that from TFA, you may have read it, but you certainly didn't understand it.

Re:Easy

[Daniel Dvorkin]

If you didn't get that from TFA, you may have read it, but you certainly didn't understand it.

I'll just re-quote from the article the passage I quoted in a previous post:

The senior VP had serious technical chops, but he wasn't about to demonstrate them in front of his peers. He feared, justifiably, that if he did so he'd get classified as a techie and taken out of consideration as a possible future CEO.

Understanding this is pretty easy; if you choose not to do so, that's your business, so to speak.

Re:Easy

[ColdWetDog]

You didn't capitalize it correctly. That's the kiss of death.

Re:Easy

[The Grim Reefer]

Here's another version: http://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html

Re:Easy

[pkbarbiedoll]

What I gathered from this article is that it is desireable in a coporate setting to be extroverted. Extroverts are rewarded, introverts are pocket-protector wearing peons.

No wonder everyone hates management.

Re:Easy

[Skreems]

Business executives don't care about the details of technology, they care about the whether and how that technology can deliver value in the context of their business problems.

The problem is, those two things go hand in hand. If you don't understand the details of the technology, you're highly likely to miss a bunch of nuance in understanding how (and how much) it can solve your business problems.

Now, if you as a hypothetical executive are willing to accept that you really DON'T understand the nuance, and trust those under you that do, then things are just peachy. Except that attitude doesn't often pair with the type-A personality that inhabits the C*O world, or even the VP world. What you're left with a majority of the time is someone who thinks technical details are "beneath them", but wants to make sweeping generalizations about what tech will do for their business. Due to the points above, those generalizations are nearly always wrong, and sometimes dangerously so.

I like to use an analogy in this type of discussion: Neil Gaiman once said (I'm paraphrasing) "People think an author goes off in a room for a week and stares at a typewriter. Then magic happens, they're hit by a stroke of genius, and emerge with a completed novel, fully formed. The reality is nothing like that. It takes years of hard work from multiple people, endless revisions, and is generally the opposite of magic."

Most people can connect with that. Of course an author doesn't write a 400 page novel in a fit of genius. Of course there are editors, and revisions, and revisions on revisions. We may not have an intuitive view of what all that work actually looks like, but anyone who's not a complete twit can examine that statement of reality against their preconceived idea, and sense its correctness.

Well, technology is a lot like that. Redundant failover systems don't fall from the sky fully formed. Coding API or User Interface abstractions don't leap into existence overnight. They're painstakingly nurtured from the seed of an idea by someone who's tired of facing the same problem over and over, and grown over months or years, usually while fending off a bunch of half-interested managers and coworkers who are more interested in making themselves look smart by talking loudly than in actually understanding what's being built.

You may think that higher ups shouldn't care about that, and to a degree I suppose that's right. They shouldn't care about the minute details of every technical thing to cross their desk. But damn it, they SHOULD understand the difference between good tech and shoddy tech, and what it means to their business. Because a corporate culture starts with the C*Os. And a corporate culture where proper respect is paid to the painstaking work of building quality systems can accelerate that business in a self-reinforcing process, while a corporate culture that dismisses tech as "that geeky stuff they do with computers" will almost certainly fall behind and fail as the people who know how to build stuff well get pissed off at constantly justifying doing things "the right way" to people who don't care, and eventually quit.

To go back to the analogy... how long do you think a publishing house would stay in business with a CEO who thinks that "writing is that thing where authors go off in a room for a week and magic happens"? That's essentially what this article is tacitly saying is A-OK, and for any company that's even remotely based on technology it's just as ludicrously wrong. That kind of BS may fly today because the culture is still in flux, but in the next 20 years every one of those companies is going to get lapped by another company that understands the magnifying effect technology can have on productivity, and understands it from the top down.

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

The senior VP had serious technical chops, but he wasn't about to demonstrate them in front of his peers. He feared, justifiably, that if he did so he'd get classified as a techie and taken out of consideration as a possible future CEO.

Understanding this is pretty easy; if you choose not to do so, that's your business, so to speak.

True. But that says a lot about what's wrong with the world. I'm beginning to think we're headed for a new dark ages. You can't keep building your world on bulldust. Eventually the "infinite financial growth, cheating your customers is good, actually doing things is for losers that work for me" paradigm breaks down in a horrible way. Thank goodness we still (for the time being) have people that understand the technicalities, and want to create not just sell or make money.

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

So to paraphrase your comments: They are just enabling the linguistic paradigm with respect to the synergies of their core target market?

Re:Easy

[houghi]

The problem is, those two things go hand in hand. If you don't understand the details of the technology, you're highly likely to miss a bunch of nuance in understanding how (and how much) it can solve your business problems.

Untrue. Let us take a car example. I as CEO want to move our product from place A to place B. I also want to move myself from place A to place B.

So I ask people who know about these stuff and he will then ask me how much stuff there is going to be moved and how often. He then proposes a truck or a fleet of truck or even train or transport by boat or a combination.

For the personal transport, he will also ask a few questions and then will come up with a bicycle or a Maybach with driver or something else, depending on the answers.

Where it will go wrong if the wrong questions are asked or if I give the wrong answer, because I want to influence the answer.

e.g. if I as a CEO ask what the best Helicopter is for my daily transport, I will get an answer to THAT question. However if I live at the office, the answer to transport should have been "Walk".

And that is often the problem: People who think they know something about the technology will ask for the wrong things and then are surprised they get the wrong answers.

Very few CEOs get this. Very few are able to let go and just trust the people in their team to be qualified in their field. I have had only a few who actually said to me "I do not understand what you are trying to explain, but I trust your experience and expertise and believe you will deliver." Obviously this does not happen at the first day at work. It takes honesty from both sides. i.e. me telling when I did not achieved some goal, why and how I would prevent it in the future. Not trying to hide my ass and blame something or somebody else. My team? My fault!

It is the basic difference between being a leader and being a manager. https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits.php

Re:Easy

[dintech]

If you don't understand the details of the technology, you're highly likely to miss a bunch of nuance in understanding how (and how much) it can solve your business problems.

As a CIO, this is what you have underlings for. You build a relationship of trust with people who DO understand the technology. You'll tend to like these people if they can deeply understand the technology and can describe it in language you are used to. "Is this good, yes or no."

This way you can then repeat that information to other people. If you get burned later because they were economical with the truth, you replace them with someone you can trust. This is is how non-technical people work.

Re:Easy

[kubajz]

It's interesting to see how we IT people think that others should really understand the technical details of what we do. Have you considered that finance people have their important details as well (e.g. debenture covenant conditions), sales people have important details (leads and pipeline management), manufacturing people have important details (inventory levels management)? One of the arts of running a company is having people on the board who know when to talk detail and when to talk the big picture. And just because we like and know the IT detail does not mean that everyone on the board should. I do a lot of work with both IT and corporate strategies, and trust me - just because someone doesn't understand Six Sigma, activity-based management, balanced scorecards, PESTLE analysis or the concept of value, and just because at the top level of the company many factors are hard to define and manage, does not mean that they are not important.

Re:Easy

[BVis]

No, the way non-technical people work (at least at the upper-management level) is that they ask their underlings for a solution to a problem, when they've really got the solution they want to hear in their heads. The underlings, who have ostensibly been hired for their expertise in their fields, give them technically sound answers, but answers that are different from what they want to hear, which annoys and confuses them. (For example, you might want to compete with Amazon, but your resources are two Java devs, a junior UX designer, and an unpaid college intern. The boss wants to hear "Yes, we can do that, no problem", when the truth is that it's completely irrational to even consider it.) Eventually, management gets tired of being told that what they want to do is physically impossible, no matter how much money it would save (and that's the important part, make sure you never spend any money, ever) and stops asking them for their input, choosing instead to say "This is what we're doing, go deal with it."

Upper management arrogance and ego are and always have been more important than technical realities. That's what needs to change. We shouldn't be encouraging CIOs to talk like CIOs, we should be encouraging people to not be fucking retards and actually LISTEN to the people they've hired to perform a duty.

if you think my karma was bad before

[nopainogain]

Today, I went to the EMC/VMware event in Baltimore. me, twentysome 50-60 year old C-levels, no technical information that could be gleaned, but a bunch of salivating million dollar budgets. I asked the engineer-presenter about his replication's bandwidth demands, he was not prepared to answer... the C-level guys asked questions like "what color is the box it comes in?" want to sound like a CIO? forget everything you know about object oriented programming, IPv6, and OSPF and Linux,, and mimic a sales-evangelist from EMC.

Re:if you think my karma was bad before

[Kreigaffe]

Those are the people who extract the most wealth from companies. Their contribution? The same fucking insight you could glean by asking a 6 year old.

Never???

[drdanny_orig]

Actually, I always try to be first to break out the jargon. I find it makes the C*O's eyes glaze over, and the meeting is cut short. That's a win for me.

Why CIO's don't talk tech...

[Anonymous Coward]

CIO's don't talk tech jargon because they don't have a fucking clue about the actual work... That shit's beneath them.

Synergy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's paramount that this endeavor not fail. We need all teams to focus on the tasks at hand go create an environment conducive for business to business relationships. I spearheaded our Service Oriented cost savings initiative starting from the top down using synrgies afforded by hiring the best of the best to reduce dependence on legacy systems. Using off the shelf products is not a viable option.

From TFA

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The senior VP had serious technical chops, but he wasn't about to demonstrate them in front of his peers. He feared, justifiably, that if he did so he'd get classified as a techie and taken out of consideration as a possible future CEO.

For any /.er working in an environment like that, I'd like to think this would be a sign that it was time to get the hell out.

Re:From TFA

[fufufang]

The senior VP had serious technical chops, but he wasn't about to demonstrate them in front of his peers. He feared, justifiably, that if he did so he'd get classified as a techie and taken out of consideration as a possible future CEO.

For any /.er working in an environment like that, I'd like to think this would be a sign that it was time to get the hell out.

That really depends on what that VP meant by "demonstrating". If "demonstrating" means talk in technical jargons which most people can't understand, then that VP should expect loads people getting annoyed. Managers need to speak in a way so in which other people can understand. Real life is not about demonstrating one's knowledge of jargons.

You should try and get someone who does computability/complexity research to talk jargon to someone who does VHDL/Verilog hardware synthesis. They totally can't understand each other.

Re:From TFA

[Kreigaffe]

And sometimes, your audience should buck the fuck up and learn a little about the things they're trying to talk about.

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why exactly should you never be the first to mention compensation in an interview process? That sounds like a recipe for a wasted hour.. if there is a serious mismatch of expectations, I'd rather know earlier rather than later.

Re:Problem

[foniksonik]

"The network is down, ETA?"

This is a more typical C level email.

What you described is a mid-level manager who was promoted out of harms way.

Say absolutely nothing with any real meaning

[Tridus]

That about covers it. We get this nonsense in the government too. Senior management does their "lean six sigma strategic planning" for the year, and comes up with a giant poster on the wall of the department priority plan.

It's got lots of lovely sounding buzzphrases and fuzzy things, but absolutely nothing that anybody who does any of the real work can actually do. So it's totally useless. Business goes on as usual, and we kind of nod politely when they're in the room and wait for them to leave so we can get back to work.

If you want to get by as a "leader" these days, the goal seems to be to offer no actual leadership, no firm plans, and no position on anything.

Re:Say absolutely nothing with any real meaning

[Kreigaffe]

Exactly how it is at every company everywhere.

Sometimes I cringe at all the waste. Not the time, because the people who develop that shit, their time is worthless to begin with -- the actual physical waste, all the shit they produce to make themselves feel good but is only ever sneered at by employees that actually do work for their paycheck.

Constant improvement is secret code for constantly creating more complicated procedures under the guise of 'streamlining' a procedure.

Re:Say absolutely nothing with any real meaning

[Darkness404]

Except having these great ideas don't matter unless they can be implemented, something that CIOs don't do.

The CIO saying we need to reduce downtime (or whatever the current buzzword is) doesn't really -do- much to affect quality. Gee, I thought having the servers go down for an hour every month was a good thing! Instead, the engineer who implements a way of preventing that monthly downtime has actually done something to boost quality.

There needs to be a bridge between the business side of things and the tech side of things, but in most companies that role is not filled by the CIO.

Re:Naturally

[OhANameWhatName]

the people with the power do absolutely none of the work

Fixed that for you.

But on a more serious note, I work above a warehouse for an import company. The owner is a multi-millionaire Chinese ex-pat. It's pretty damn sobering to see him weeding, sweeping and driving a forklift when he has time. He doesn't have to, and he's not doing it to motivate his staff. For him, it's just the right thing to do.

Restepca

Re:Naturally

[epyT-R]

They had to have done something, or we'd probably be a recently freed territory of great britain today. These people were not of the same culture as what we have today.

Re:Naturally

[epyT-R]

A nice anecdote, but, really, he's still not in the same situation as his employees, mainly for the reason you stated: he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to answer to anyone, he doesn't have to do those tasks to get paid, and he doesn't have to tolerate any passive aggressive attempts at manipulation in order to keep his job.

Brutally Honest

[DaMattster]

Just sound like the world's biggest douche bag and say, "Cloud ... blah blah .... Cloud"

Great article, thanks for posting!

[JimtownKelly]

Great CIOs, demonstrate a balance between understanding the business and understanding the technology in their communications. Fortunately I've worked for a couple of these in my career. Few and far between.

Re:Ugh... I hate that shit

[Kreigaffe]

The former being delivered by approximately a dozen well-dressed office dwellers before they depart to their catered meal for the rest of the day,
the latter being said by one dude who waves everyone off back to work before even turns to leave.

CIO Monthly

[VortexCortex]

was that just another pop-psych regurgitation of 'Primate Power: use these hackneyed verbal tricks to pretend that you are the monkey with the biggest cock in the room!' as seen far too often in the various 'self-help for the painfully mediocre' columns that run in various media?

Hmm, not working for you? Try one of the other columns:

Ten hot buttons to drive your CEO wild.
Managing the Managers Managers for Fun and Profit.
Is your CTO spying on you? Find out using this one weird trick.
Not getting any at home? "Borrow" it from the supply closet.
How To: Turn Heads in your next Teleconference.
Lie with Numbers without getting caught: It's not you, it's them!
Lingo Bingo: Generate More Buzz with less Words.

Through the looking glass

[jbeaupre]

We build stuff and it better damn well work. So....

Our CEO is a physicist. All of the people in upper management have degrees in science or engineering, including sales and marketing. Yeah, you have to use business jargon, but if you don't talk tech, you don't get to participate at a strategic level. The less you know, the lower in the pecking order you are around here.

Re:First post

[Anonymous Coward]

The thought may have been there, but you didn't quite rise up to the occasion.

Re:Naturally

[ATMAvatar]

That's precisely why it's a nice anecdote. Weeding and sweeping especially are shit jobs that people do because they have to. Finding a millionaire company owner who's still willing to get down-and-dirty is a good sign that he isn't full of himself. Buy the man a beer.

Not always

[Edward Kmett]

As a CIO, I viewed my job to be the opposite of everything in this article.

Of course it is good to listen. It is good to be able to interact with anyone on their level of technical expertise and understanding. This advice holds at every level of an organization.

It is also occasionally good to be capable of being demonstrably the most technically competent person in the room. Effective organizations do need the person who can actually ensure there exists an implementble strategy to accomplish the things the CEO is selling the world, and the things the client wants, and who can articulate to vendors exactly why their magic bullet isn't quite what you need. And in many ways as a CIO, your role is to be the one person at that level of management who really understands the ins and outs of how the technology works, how things can improve and how you can adapt to meet the challenges of the organization as a whole.

Sometimes that means being the voice of reason as the curmudgeonly technology guy, but more often it means trying to steer management towards implementable solutions and being able to suggest things that give the other CXO types options they didn't know existed.

Whether facing inward within the organization or outward to clientele or vendors, you need to be able to communicate effectively. One thing this article omits is that when facing outward, it is often good to know when to overload the vendor to get to someone who is more competent to address your concerns, and somewhat more judiciously to be able to out-tech a client's technical guys as well.

Sometimes it _does_ pay to be the smartest person in the room.

Don't be the first to mention compensation?

[grasshoppa]

Let me be the first to say, "Bullshit". I'm not in that interview chair because I enjoy the process. I'm not planning on working there because that's how I want to spend 9+ solid hours of my day ( although I do enjoy my work ). I'm there to earn a check.

Likewise, they aren't interviewing me because I'm an insightful and witty bastard ( although I am ). Neither are they going to hire me because looking at my pretty face is the highlight of their day. They want production out of me.

Now, that won't be the first thing out of my mouth, but I certainly will not hobble myself in an interview by letting them dictate what we talk about, when. Once I feel satisfied that I can do the work they want, and further, I think they feel satisfied I can do the work they want me to do, compensation becomes the next point of topic. If they don't bring it up, I will.

Contradictory skillsets.

[doubledown00]

The point of the article is that if you want to rise to CIO, you have to understand the company and how its buisness operates. This means having to transition from skills that are helpful in IT (detailed oriented micro thinking) to skills that are used in business (macro based "big picture" thinking). The article says not to use jargon because managers at the high echelons do not care about the nuts and bolts of how something gets done. They care about the end result and other non-technical drivers (cost, ROI, etc).

Understand, these are typically skills that do not make for a good IT worker. Someone good at IT is detail oriented and laser focused on specific tasks. It is difficult training one's brain to think in a different manner. And in the IT real, people are quick to discount those who don't think as they do. The sad part is those that "think differently" in this case happen to be those who sign the paychecks.

CIO?

[pr100]

Ironic that an article about avoiding jargon uses "CIO" - I've no idea what that means...

You forgot the obligatory closing line...

[Cid Highwind]

"The network is down, ETA?

Sent from my iPad"